


Subjunctive

by LizaPod



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Blood, Blowjobs, Character Study, Emotional Manipulation, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Rimming, Self-Loathing, Teacher-Student Relationship, Underage - Freeform, Unreliable Narrator, but not the way you might expect, deeply flawed individuals, ephebephilia, history boys references, limited third person pov, lots of references actually, no one in this is a good or a nice person, references to former unhealthy relationship, sodomy, sodoyou
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-29
Updated: 2013-01-20
Packaged: 2017-11-22 20:04:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/613752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizaPod/pseuds/LizaPod
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And then Stiles.</p><p>Stiles fucking Stilinski walks back into Adrian’s classroom on the second day of his sophomore year and it’s as though a veil has been lifted from Adrian’s eyes and wrapped around his throat to throttle him instead. He’d barely noticed the loud-mouthed twerp last year, except to grudgingly acknowledge that the kid had good grades and potential if he’d ever sit the fuck down and stop trying to drag his moron of a friend along with him. And now he is the incarnation of all of Adrian’s repressed ephebephilic desires, from sarcastic, beautiful mouth to fingers that are as jittery and animated as his sharp little mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [apiphile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/apiphile/gifts), [bicskill](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=bicskill), [jelenedra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jelenedra/gifts).



> I will make everyone have as many feelings about Adrian Harris as I do. I make no promises as to what kind of feelings they are.
> 
> This is told entirely from the point of view of an ephebephile. It is his perspective on every event, and his necessarily limited, skewed, morally bankrupt and flawed understanding of the effects of his actions on others. It is not, overall, a happy story, though there are interludes of deluded happiness. 
> 
> Warnings: Canon compliant through season 2 from the perspective of someone outside the events. Contains consensual if manipulative teacher/student relationships, severe age difference, and references to unhealthy relationships.

Adrian Harris does not touch up his students.

 

This is mostly-half because they’re all vile, ignorant, unwashed little shits who don’t understand why dead chemist jokes are funny and mostly-half because he likes having a state pension and no prison time, and the remainder because he is not some pervert with an ice cream truck and no self control. He’s got a Master’s from Berkeley, for crying out loud.

 

Being a high school teacher is torturous for so many, _many_ reasons, not the least because he is an ephebephile of discerning tastes constantly drawn to a smorgasbord of slightly rancid desserts (rancid desserts here standing in for acne-ridden teenage boys who smell like stale gym socks and speak like Neanderthals) in the hope that one day, there might be one that’s not past its use-by, bitten into, or topped with crème-de-Axe. The crippling stupidity of his average student is only barely outweighed by the one or two boys every few years who actually tempt him to take his hands out of his pockets and break a few laws.

 

Not that he ever indulges. He knows, deeply, morally, legally, that his craving to bend a beautiful, foul-mouthed brat of a boy over his desk and worship him in the manner of the Greeks is wrong and perverse and dangerous to the student in question. But the temptation is always lurking. It has since he was the age his students are now. It was just that, in the immortal words of Wooderson, he kept getting older and they stayed the same age.

 

And it’s not like temptation sticks around for long; a year, at most, and then they graduate or move or grow stubble and he loses interest or access. Gale Wong was his first and longest obsession, back in his first year of teaching, a lanky, graceful boy with a flair for decanting solutions and a breathless laugh that left Adrian winded in its wake until his grades dropped due to a sudden case of girlfriend. Anthony was next, who asked him for a recommendation letter to Stanford’s chemistry department and graduated early, leaving Adrian bereft.

 

He falls into a shot glass, and then a bottle.

 

Three years of spotty imbeciles, arrogant twinks, and monotonous average wallflowers pass drunkenly and largely without temptation. Adrian dates co-eds, barely legal to drink who think they’re being _so naughty_ sleeping with an _older man_ , and who can’t keep his whiskey-soaked interest for as long as it takes to meet their friends or take up space on their bathroom counter. He dates no one, for a while, and debates going back to finish his doctorate, remove himself from the fallow land of this shitty small town where nothing’s changed since he moved here with his parents in the seventh grade. He could get a job in a college town and satisfy himself with the jailbait of a bigger city and never deal with the self-inflicted pain of not giving into his flawed wiring.

 

He claws his way back out of the bottle two months after a pretty blond with fantastic tits wheedles the secrets of using chemistry for crime out of him and the Hale family is murdered. He wakes up in a dorm room with some acne-laced undergrad whose sheets still have Iron Man on them and the taste of vomit and semen caking his teeth, and it is the straw that breaks the self-loathing camel’s back. He dries out. He goes back to work. He keeps his hands to himself and his eyes off the boys and never touches the bottle of Jack that sits unopened in the top corner of his closet.

 

And then _Stiles_.

 

Stiles _fucking_ Stilinski walks back into Adrian’s classroom on the second day of his sophomore year and it’s as though a veil has been lifted from Adrian’s eyes and wrapped around his throat to throttle him instead. He’d barely noticed the loud-mouthed twerp last year, except to grudgingly acknowledge that the kid had good grades and potential if he’d ever sit the fuck down and stop trying to drag his moron of a friend along with him. And now he is the incarnation of all of Adrian’s repressed ephebephilic desires, from sarcastic, beautiful mouth to fingers that are as jittery and animated as his sharp little mind.

  
Adrian’s cockstruck, stupefied, and seething. More than ever before, he thinks, he _wants_ what he must not want and can’t ever have, and he immediately hates the power Stile’s adolescent transformation has over him.

 

With Gale, with Anthony, with the loves of his youth, it had been sweeter and a thing that grew into desire and faded quickly and mostly painlessly. Stiles crashes into his blood and sets it to boiling like he’s sixteen again himself. He finds himself with his back to the classroom more than is wise for a class with a dangerous combination of arrogant geniuses and utter idiots, but he cannot handle the sprawl of Stiles’ limbs and the way he stares at Lydia in a juvenile parody of Adrian’s cockstruck adoration.

 

That night he is shaken by the violence with which he takes himself in hand and the ease with which he slips into the fantasy of Stiles’ mouth, his long thighs, the faint trail of dark hair he caught a glimpse of between skinny jeans and baggy shirt. All alone in his Ikea-perfect apartment complete with glassware with tiny bubbles and imperfections to prove that they were lovingly hand-crafted by the indigenous peoples of wherever, Adrian abuses himself under a frigid shower and crawls alone, wet, nude, into his bed to sleep with his hands firmly held outside the sheets and a resolution to keep Stiles at bay.

 

 

* * *

 

In private moments, when it’s just him and his subscriptions to twink porn sites, Adrian will admit that perhaps he goes overboard in his attempts to keep Stiles from getting deeper under his skin. He ditches his latest 19-year-old, who at least was smart enough not to ask why he was being summarily dumped, and throws himself into independent research. He masturbates like he’s one of his students. He is harder on all his students than he would normally be and excuses it with the fact that more of them are exceptionally bright and could use the extra motivation this year; if he is harder on Stiles than the rest of them, well, Stiles is resilient.

 

* * *

 

Adrian loathes Jackson Whittemore with the same passion that he covets Stiles, but he sympathizes with the spoiled teenage dickhead’s emotional damage from shit he had no control over and his methods of reclaiming control over his life. Adrian dreams every day of not having screwed up wiring in his head; he fights every day against temptation and the lies he tells himself and the world.  As shit falls down around the school and his students, Adrian watches Jackson’s meltdown from the sidelines. He offers his support, guidance. Jackson may grind on his nerves and do nothing for him, but Adrian isn’t a bad person. He wants the kid to be okay.

 

* * *

 

There are so many things he doesn’t understand about what happens in the moments before Derek Hale throws him to the floor and a desk explodes against the blackboard and the room is flooded by police spotlights.

 

Adrian knows it’s Derek in a split second. It may have been six years since the fire and the exodus of the remaining Hales from Beacon Hills, but he recognizes something of the sullen, spotty teenager in the angry twenty-something next to him. There’s a family resemblance, too, Derek and Laura and Peter before the fire put him in the coma. Peter hadn’t had Derek’s acne in high school, had been too clear-skinned and handsome to notice Adrian with glasses and knobby knees and two years under him.

 

Derek vanishes before he can say anything, before the words _I’m sorry_ even cross his mind.

 

He has no answers about what just happened when Sheriff Stilinski comes, only too-late apologies to the wrong person.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The shit hits the fan in so many ways, so many times sat the school and in town that Adrian loses count. There’s a _body count_ , for chrissake. A _rising_ body count, at that, and Stiles and the band of freaks and geeks he seems to hold together by sheer determination are at the center of so many shitstorms that Adrian and the rest of the teachers stop bothering to ask for explanations as to why homework is late and grades are slipping. Everyone’s but Stiles’ grades, at least; Stiles keeps handing in barely-legible but brilliant homework, keeps knocking tests out of the park, and keeps sinking visibly deeper into the sullen anger that used to only show itself in flashes.

 

Adrian sits silently during the innumerable detentions wherein Scott and Stiles try to be quiet  and subtle about whatever pile of crap they’ve fallen face first into, and wonders when Scott is going to notice that the circles under Stiles’ eyes haven’t faded since winter break or if he’s ever asked if Stiles is alright after all the shit he’s been through. He taps at his screen aimlessly, catches up on the latest papers in organic chemistry, plant biology, pedagogy, and tries not to laugh as Stiles basically recites Uncle Ben’s _great power great responsibility_ speech from Spider-Man at Scott.

 

He wants, so badly, so viscerally, _wants_ to banish Scott and tell Stiles that he sees him, that he’s beautiful and brilliant, that he’s wanted and adored. Adrian sees Stiles’ misery.

 

He wants to stop it.

 

He wants to kiss Stiles until he’s breathless and can’t speak and isn’t in pain any more but he knows he’d only make it worse.

 

* * *

 

Adrian is under arrest and then isn’t. Jackson dies and then isn’t dead. Stiles’ face is bloodied and then heals. School ends.

 

* * *

  

Summer passes in Beacon Hills with surprisingly little reported violence. There aren’t any bodies. There aren’t any “mountain lion” attacks.  No arrest warrants are announced for Derek Hale, which Adrian privately thinks means he’s left town given the frequency with which they had been issued previously. He gets no visits from Sheriff Stilinski, the state police, or parents with the last names Argent, Whittemore, Martin, or McCall. It’s quite possibly the most relaxing summer he’s had in years, if only because it’s such a respite from the constant insanity that has been going on for the past school year.

 

Adrian teaches summer school, lecturing to a sea of blank faces who still haven’t managed to get it through their thick skulls that they are being given a second chance rather than being punished. Scott McCall in particular looks wretched and miserable during his periods in Adrian’s blessedly air-conditioned classroom, with a jittering leg and entirely unfurtive glances out the window towards freedom, sunshine, and Stiles.

 

Not that Stiles is anywhere near the high school; upon advisement from Adrian, the principal, and several other faculty members, he, Lydia Martin, and a few other shining beacons of hope for the school had been pressed into a summer intensive program near Sacramento. This has the benefit of keeping them all out of trouble, the hospital, and Adrian’s way, as well as all the academic benefits outlined in the glossy pamphlet advertising _six weeks of rigorous college-level study and fun_. The latest principal has gotten it into her head that they’re going to send these kids to Ivies on scholarship, or at least West Coast Ivies, and put Beacon Hills High on the map. Adrian starts referring to her as Headmaster behind her back and regrets his life decisions to watch _The History Boys_ so many times.

 

* * *

 

 

Summer break ends, like it does every year, before the end of summer; mid-August sees the unwashed hoards breaking over the school like a tidal wave of hormones, stupidity, and sullenness.

 

Adrian sits at the head of the classroom on a disgustingly hot, painfully dry, wild-fire-warning type of Wednesday afternoon and watches the AP chemistry students file in. All his old favorites, plus two new faces, a matched set girl and boy who at least look like they’re trying to make a good impression on their classmates but who are clearly being viewed with suspicion in the light of last school year’s insanity. Stiles and Lydia are the last in, just before the bell, with their heads together in a way that makes Adrian’s guts feel like they’ve transformed into acid-coated barbed wire.

 

Stiles glows, golden-tan and healthy from central California sun and weeks away from whatever shit he’s been sucked into in Beacon Hills. The deep circles under his eyes have faded to the wholesome smudges of a teenage boy with ADHD and an internet connection, the fullness is almost back to formerly-gaunt cheeks and he’s smiling in a way Adrian’s not seen since last August. Weeks spent with Lydia Martin, duly and ostentatiously crowned fashion queen of BHH, have apparently done him all the favors in the world because he’s wearing clothes that seemed designed specifically to prod at Adrian’s proclivities. He’s never particularly cared about what his students, or even his infatuations, have worn before, but he thanks and damns whatever airheaded fashion drone designed the shirt that clings to Stiles’ broadening shoulders and narrow waist, and roundly damns whatever brilliant mastermind that decided boys should wear jeans as low and tight as their girlfriends’. Stiles looks like sin in red and black. Adrian clutches his chalk like a lifeline.

 

* * *

 

“He _hates_ me.” Stiles’ voice carries into Adrian’s classroom from the hallway after class. “He’s such a dickhead, why is he such a dickhead? I got the damn answers _right_.”

 

He has just handed back midterms and Stiles had forgotten, in his cleverness, to note the part of the exam questions that said _show your work_ ; his grade had been a thoroughly disappointing B-. Stiles has been informed of Adrian’s disappointment in his oversight thanks to a note at the end of his exam to that effect. He has refrained from asking Stiles to see him after class to discuss this; for one B- this would be suspicious and also too much for his nerves.

 

“He’s just pulling your pigtails.” Lydia, as usual, sounds bored. “And it was _bold_ on the front page, so you do deserve it.”  
  
“But showing work is _boring._   He knows we know how to do it!” An  incoherent garble of syllables and the distinct thud of two hands slapping painted cinderblock make Adrian smile into his grading. Stiles’ melodrama is endearing. He imagines the contortions Stiles’ beautiful mouth is probably going through, visualizes so briefly running his thumb over that luscious lower lip. He tamps that thought down immediately.

 

“You know if you went and batted your eyes at him he’d change it for you,” Lydia coos.

 

Adrian’s spine turns to ice.

 

“I’m not you.” Another garbled string and another slap.

 

“Of course not. _I_ read all the instructions carefully. _You_ were racing Danny and now you’re crying like a baby because part of the game was to finish first _and_ get the higher grade.”

 

“Ugh ugh ugh I hate you and he hates me and I’m not _flirting_ my way to an A.”

 

Adrian conscientiously unclenches his fists and stares at the angry red marks on the insides of his palms. He is in a cold sweat. He has not been careful enough.

 

“Go on, _Dakin_.” Lydia’s heels click on the linoleum, painfully echoing the thud of blood in Adrian’s ears.

 

“Can I at least borrow your _Tudor Economic Documents_?” Stiles yells after her. Adrian does not look up to watch Stiles run past his door; he forces himself to be irritated that Stiles apparently knows _The History Boys_ far too well for someone his age.

 

* * *

 

 

“Did you show your work this time, Mr. Stilinski?” Adrian asks, trying to sound as indifferent as possible when Stiles hands in his quiz the next week.

 

“I think you’ll find I did indeed,” Stiles drawls. He stands at attention safely on the other side of Adrian’s desk as the other students file out past him; Scott lurks at the doorway, clearly impatient. Adrian ignores him and concentrates on not studying the way Stiles’ shirt isn’t quite meeting the top of his jeans, just above what he imagines is the sharp jut of a hipbone. He does not glance down, he does not lick his lips against the thought of what Stiles’ skin would taste like there. He turns his attention to the quiz before him, which has been done in _pen,_ the cocky little _shit_.

 

“ _Stiles_.” Adrian cannot help but groan in abject frustration. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

 

“And what does Mr. Hector want?” Stiles sounds so pleased with himself that Adrian wants to turn him over his knee and fucking _spank him_ , which is one of those thoughts that he throttles so quickly that he chokes on the throttling as much as on Stiles’ smug cleverness and horrifically explicit reference to Adrian’s perversions.

Aside from the _blue pen_ Stiles has used to fill out the exam, without a single strike through or scribble, the entire test has been answered in _paragraphs._ There isn’t a single numeral. Stiles has literally written out his full answers in untidy block printed _words_.

 

And it’s all correct.

 

“It says at the top of the page to do it in pencil, Mr. Stilinski,” Adrian grinds out. “Points off.”

 

Stiles’ arrogance deflates into impotent teenage frustration before his very eyes and he makes one of those ridiculous growling wails of rage that he does so well.

  
“Oh my god you _suck_ ,” he hisses, and storms off. Adrian does not watch him leave, does not let himself prove Stiles right and watch his flat, teenage boy non-ass walk away.

 

“Anyway, Irwin is probably more accurate than _Hector_ ,” he mutters to himself, pleased with his self-restraint and loathing, as per pathetic usual, his need for it.

 

“Dude, what’s Irwin and why is it more right than Hector?” Scott demands out in the hallway.

 

Some days Adrian wonders if he should inform his classes that he can, in fact, hear them when they stand just outside the door and complain about him. At least Scott is too obsessed with Allison Argent to get the reference, although _how the hell he heard that_ is a question Adrian would very much like to know the answer to.

 

“Do you not retain _any_ information from the quality cinema I make you watch?” Stiles demands in return.

 

“Is it from one of those weird Mel Brooks movies?”

 

“You’re _useless_. I don’t know why I bother. Go watch _Transformers 3_ again or something.” Stiles sounds utterly disgusted and Adrian lets himself breathe again.

 

“Is it _Princess Bride_? Just because you have a boner for that blond dude doesn’t mean I’ve gotta memorize it, too.”

 

“I hate you. You have no taste. I’m going to let you die next time for maligning my precious Westley.” Stiles laughs and the sound stabs through Adrian’s chest.

 

* * *

 

When the explosion comes, _literally_ , when something explodes behind him during Thursday’s lab, he doesn’t even have to look to see who’s responsible. He knows. He knows deep in his veins that Stiles Stilinski has managed to blow something up in a lab where they’re supposed to be making _aspirin_.

 

 _Managed_.

 

Contrived to, more like it.

 

“ _Mister Stilinski,_ ” he snaps before he even turns around.

 

“WHAT?” Stiles’ aggrieved wail drips with lies just waiting to be told.

 

“Detention.”

 

“It was an accident!”

 

“Two days’ detention for lying.” He is digging himself into a hole but he cannot let this go unpunished.

 

“ _Oh my god_ ,” Stiles whines. The hush over the rest of the classroom is heavy; the only sound other than Stiles’ whining is the sound of whatever he’d blown up simmering quietly on the Bunsen burner.

 

“I can make it a week, if you’d like,” Adrian snaps, finally turning around to survey the damage through the haze of smoke.

 

Well, at least no one’s bleeding.

 

Nothing’s on fire, either, and apparently his students are by now so desensitized to insane things happening that everyone is just calmly righting their overturned stools and fixing their hair and going back to stirring their acetylsalicylic acid solutions. Stiles begins wiping up his debris and clearly _not_ looking at Lydia or Danny in a way that makes Adrian very, _very_ suspicious.

 

What he cannot allow himself to do is feel proud, irrationally proud, that Stiles knows how to create and control an explosion like that.

 

Adrian has two hours and fifty-six minutes from the time the bell rings to summon his class to their next period and the time Stiles is due to reappear in his classroom. He spends all of it trying not to think about being alone in a room with brilliant, angry, clever, _beautiful_ Stiles. His freshman biology class doesn’t know what hit it.

 

* * *

 

Stiles is late to detention. He saunters into Adrian’s classroom at 3:17 exactly and is greeted by a glare backed with the full force of Adrian’s steeled, self-loathing nerves.

 

“And what does Mr. Hec-“

 

“Call me Hector again and I will call your father and tell him exactly how much hydrochloric acid is missing from my supply cabinets after your little stunt today.” Adrian points to the desk in the dead center of the room, away the door so no one can try to have some bizarre mimed conversation with him through the window (he has learned from experience with Stiles and his cadre of deranged friends, yes he has), but close enough that he can keep an eye on what Stiles is working on.

 

“I had nothing to do with any missing supplies of any kind in any way shape or form, I only _accidentally_ caused a mild incendiary disruption that yielded zero property damage or physical harm.” Stiles fails at sounding or looking remotely innocent, though Adrian’s fairly sure that’s what he’s trying for.

 

“The day I believe that, Mr. Stilinski, is the day I retire from teaching. Do your homework. You’re here until 4:30, so I suggest you make the most of your time.” Adrian opens a folder stuffed with exams from his remedial earth science class; the frustration of marking midterms filled with answers like _global warmin is like a compleet lie_ will help him control himself.

 

It takes half an hour before Adrian becomes suspicious at the lack of ambient noise coming from Stiles’ general vicinity. There is no shuffle, no rattle of papers or clicking of pens or gnashing of teeth. The dead silence sets his nerves on edge in a way the common noises of an active teenager never have.

 

He looks up and feels the incalculable weight of Stiles’ focus on him.

 

“What do you _want_ , Mr. Stilinski?” he snaps, knuckles going bloodlessly, desperately white as he clenches his hands into fists. “You have-“ he checks his phone- “forty-two minutes until you can leave and staring at me like that isn’t going to get you out of here any faster.”

 

“I want to know what it’s going to take to get you on your knees over here blowing me,” Stiles drawls, and doesn’t smile. Adrian’s nails dig into the meat of his palms and he swallows convulsively.

 

“Jesus _Christ_ , Stiles, what the hell are you thinking?” he grits out, so painfully, so reluctantly, so ready to run for the door and the safety of space away from Stiles’ grim eyes and serious mouth or collapse to his knees obediently and bury his face in the warmth of Stiles’ thigh.

 

“I’m thinking your first answer wasn’t _no_.” The sound of the lab stool grating across linoleum grinds against Adrian’s eardrums and he prays for deafness so he can’t hear what Stiles is saying. He prays for blindness because he can’t look away from Stiles’ face, the curve of his lower lip or the easy spread of his legs on his chair. “I’m thinking, you said you’re _Irwin_. You _want_ me. You want to suck me off. And I _want you to_. I’ve thought about it, you blowing me. You fucking me. Right here in this room.”

 

“You don’t know what you’re asking for.” Adrian cannot tell if his palms are bleeding or if it’s just the cold sweat that’s making his hands damp. “You. _Stiles_. Please don’t.”

 

“Tell me to go to the counselor, then. Leave.” Stiles licks his lips. “Or come here and _blow me_.”

 

“ _Stiles, please.”_ He has never sounded so pathetic in his life. He clutches at his own thighs, chokes on his own tongue when Stiles’ fingers loose the button at the top of his fly. Goddamn him. Goddamn Stiles and goddamn himself and goddamn _everything_ but Adrian wants so fucking badly.

 

“Come here,” Stiles commands, with a voice that shakes Adrian to his weakest, lowest, most perverse core and hauls him out of his chair like a rope is tied to his heart.

 

He falls to his knees with a resounding thud that must rattle through the foundations of the building. Surely someone must know that he is about to break his life-long fast. If there is a god, which he doubts in his bones and hopes he’s wrong, _if there is a god_ , someone will stop him because he cannot stop himself from pressing his face into the heated black denim over Stiles’ knee.

 

Stiles takes a fistful of his hair and pulls his glasses off, tossing them carelessly on the lab table. Adrian breathes deep of the sharp scent of strong detergent and the sweat of Stiles’ skin. He feels sick. He’s dizzy and sweating and nauseated and boiling under his skin and he curls his fingers around Stiles’ calves and just breathes.

 

“Please, Stiles,” he begs, and doesn’t know what he’s begging for.

 

“Do it.” Stiles pulls his hair, tugging his face inward. He watches, too close to see clearly without his glasses, as Stiles opens his jeans and pulls out his _Christ he can’t even think it_. But he obeys, he obeys without question and sends himself spiraling towards hell with one press of his mouth to bare flesh.

 

The hell to which Adrian consigns himself is the sweetest thing he’s ever known. He drowns willingly in the discomforts of his position because of the greedy hitch in Stiles’ voice when he demands more. He clutches at Stiles’ thighs for an anchor and swallows around him and revels in the pain of Stiles using his hair as reins to control him. It lasts an eternity, the slick slide of youthful flesh over his tongue and the ragged sounds of Stiles’ breath.

 

It is over too soon, with a strangled series of whines over his head and rough, strong fingers yanking at his hair in a warning. Adrian swallows. He has no other choice and given his one chance to drink down all of Stiles, he wouldn’t choose anything else if he had options. It is the one thing, he thinks, that he will not regret from this.

 

Stiles pushes him off before his thighs have stopped trembling under Adrian’s fingers. Adrian falls back onto his heels, with blurry vision and shaking hands and his own flesh hot and pressing in his jeans. Stiles reaches down like a benediction with his glasses. Adrian slides them back on to see clearly for the first time Stiles’ flushed face and bitten red lips and reaches for Stiles’ ankle with one hand. He wants an anchor, a reassurance, a flood of curses and wholly accurate accusations.

 

Instead Stiles reaches down again and wipes at Adrian’s mouth with one thumb. It is a gesture that is overripe with condescension and screams of learned behavior. It is what he has done to his moronic twinks on his floor and barely-legal boys in club bathrooms. Someone has done that to Stiles when he was on his knees, he _knows_ , and burns him to know that he was not the first to touch this beautiful boy. It burns him hotter, harsher, fire over acid, to think that someone has treated Stiles the way Adrian has treated the men whose presence he resented so much.

 

“Stiles,” he breathes out eventually.

 

“I need agar and petri dishes from the bio labs. You’re going to give them to me or get them for me.” Stiles slaps Adrian’s hands away from his fly when he tries to help. “ _Don’t_. Just get me the stuff.”

 

“I’ll get it. It’ll. It’ll take time. A week or so.”

 

“Fine, man. But I need it so don’t jerk me around.” Stiles lurches too his feet and catches Adrian in the shoulder with a bony knee. He rattles his backpack around and shoves his things in while Adrian leans helplessly against the lab table.

 

“You’re not going to tell anyone… your father?”

 

“Uh, no? That’s how blackmail works, genius, I have incriminating evidence against you and you give me what I want so I don’t tell anyone.” Stiles looks down at him like he’s scum; Adrian agrees with him. “Soooo, I’m gonna go, and you’re gonna get me the blood jelly and petri dishes and I won’t tell my dad that you’re meeting me in Berkeley on Saturday at this address.”

 

Adrian takes the paper that’s dangled in front of him like he’s an automaton and tucks it into his jacket pocket.

 

“Be there after 7, I’ve got a campus visit in the afternoon in the City and it’ll be too late to drive baaaack, so I’m crashing at my friends’. Who’ll be out of town. And doesn’t give a shit that I do.” Stiles hesitates visibly for the first time, and then runs spindly fingers through Adrian’s hair. It’s like a mockery of a blessing. “Just. Be there.”

 

* * *

 

He moves through the evening in a daze.

 

It is nothing short of a miracle that he doesn’t crash on the drive back to his condo, or burn himself cooking the dinner he doesn’t eat. He manages, at least, to undress completely before subjecting himself to the frigid waters of his shower.

 

His hand isn’t even cold comfort when he starts jerking off, with his teeth sunk into his lip and his eyes clenched shut against the pressure of the water. It’s a punishment, a reminder of his shame and the deep, visceral hate he bears for himself even when he’s remembering Stiles’ quiet gasp for breath just before he came. Adrian finds himself wrapping his mind around the image of Stiles on his back, open and greedy and so beautifully demanding, the same hitched breath against Adrian’s mouth when he pushes in for the first time.

 

He comes moments later. He blinks stupidly down at his hand, dazed with orgasm and cold and self-loathing, and watches the blurs of semen wash off his fingers.

 

That is when his chest seizes up with great, heaving, choking sobs. Adrian sinks to his knees, collapses backwards against the wall. Though his vision is already clouded from water and his lack of glasses, he blinds himself on tears. He is lower than vile. He is a child molester, and utter scum, and if someone- Stiles, Stiles’ father- were to burst in righteously demanding his punishment he would point to his heart and tell them to put him out of his and everyone else’s misery. He is weak and debased. He wants desperately to hate Stiles for bringing him to this, but he can’t. He should have been stronger.

 

Adrian reaches unseeing for the knob. He turns it as hot as can be, to scald the rotten flesh from his bones. He is become the thing he has fought against for so long, for a pair of angry eyes and a dangerous mind and a sharp enough command. Snot and tears would streak his face as he sobs but for the water washing them away without leaving him the least bit cleaner for their absence.

 

He hates himself, and prays to nothing for death.

 

* * *

 

Adrian doesn’t die. Shockingly enough, when you pray to nothing, nothing happens. 

* * *

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The absurdity of trying to dress for a teenager’s approval finally catches up with him and he shrugs on the first shirt that comes to hand out of his casual drawer, a little too tight for teaching in but definitely not bordering on circuit club appropriate. Contacts, rather than glasses- he wants to be able to see what he’s risking everything for- and he decides that if he needs to run from Chris Hansen and a camera crew, sneakers are probably better than loafers.

Friday morning doesn’t dawn so much as seep slowly into existence and crawl under his eyelids as he pretends to sleep.

 

Before school even starts he pawns all of his detentions for the day off on Finstock (and there will be _many_ by the end of the day, he has no doubt) and settles in with his espresso-loaded coffee for a long day of silently judging his students. Friday first period is remedial earth science, so the judging is off to an excellent start.

 

So is loading up Finstock with extra detentions, for that matter.

 

It’s halfway through lunch time when Stiles appears before his desk in a breathless whirl, accompanied by the slam of his classroom door. The flush on his cheeks and manic grin sucks all the air out of Adrian’s lungs.

  
“You’re going to be there on Saturday, right?” Stiles demands, hands planted on his desk and leaning into Adrian’s space like he owns it. Adrian steels his resolve.

 

“I can’t. Stiles. You’ve already got enough to get me fired, I’ll get you whatever you want,” he says, trying to sound as though he isn’t mortifyingly affected Stiles’ sudden proximity.

 

“What I _want_ is for you to come to Berkeley and fuck me and maybe buy me a pizza after or something.” Stiles leans in closer. Adrian is acutely aware of the window in the door and the exact number of minutes he has left in lunch before the next round of morons comes streaming through the door and the sharp odor of cheap teenage boy’s body spray mixing in glorious congress with Stiles’ sweat. “Don’t pretend you don’t want to fuck me, Mr. Harris.”

 

“Do you enjoy being shocking, _Mr_. Stilinski?” Adrian puts on his most condescendingly authoritative voice, the one that quells jocks and cheerleaders and smartass idiots alike; it sounds weak and futile to his own ears.

  
“Yeah, actually. But I’m right, aren’t I? You, wanting me. I mean, it’s not like you’d have blown me yesterday if you were totally grossed out by the whole idea, and you _really_ wouldn’t have gotten hard off blowing me, and I’m not _stupid_ , I know you think I am but I’m _not_ and I know what it looks like when an older guy feels guilty about wanting to fuck me and trying to be noble about it okay, so _stop it_ and just say you’re gonna come tomorrow and don’t jerk me around because I know what the fuck I’m doing.”  
  
“Stiles.” Adrian releases the unwitting death grip he has on his red pen of grading doom and grabs Stiles’ wrist when Stiles pauses for air. He has a sinking sneaking suspicion that Stiles didn’t entirely mean to say all that.

 

“ _What_.”

 

“I don’t think you’re stupid.” He allows himself one, _one_ , slow swipe of his thumb across Stiles’ pulse before pulling his hand away. He swallows down the sensation of knives in his throat. “I _can’t_ because it’s illegal and immoral and I don’t want you to- I don’t want to take advantage of you.”

 

“But you want to fuck me.” Stiles pins his hand to the desk’s surface with strong fingers. Adrian remembers them pulling his hair and grits his teeth against the memory.  
  
“God help me, I do.” It’s out before he can stop himself.

 

“I don’t see a problem here then. Is it because you’re a teacher and I’m a boy?”

 

“Obviously tha- _Stiles_. Don’t _start_ that again. Don’t try to distract me with that.” Adrian runs his free hand through his hair, frustrated and sexually frustrated and panicking about someone coming in at any moment.

 

“I like how you say my name when you’re annoyed with me but secretly enjoying the fact that I get all your dirty old man references,” Stiles says, and Adrian groans.

 

“Don’t say shit like that.” He pulls his hand free and picks up his pen. “It doesn’t actually work as a distraction.”  
  
“So you’ll be there tomorrow?”

 

“I- Stiles- _fine_. I’ll _try_ to be there. That’s the best I can do.” His guts writhe and clench and he lets the waves of shame crash over him as he recognizes that he’s just made an assignation to meet a seventeen year old boy for sex.

 

“You’ll be there.” Stiles’ smug confidence is equal parts irritating and charming.

 

“Get out of here before I turn myself in just to make you shut up.” Adrian pointedly turns his attention back to the pile of grading.

 

“See you tomorrow. I’m not joking about pizza, by the way, you’re gonna buy me dinner.” Stiles finally removes himself from the periphery of Adrian’s personal space but lingers halfway between the door and Adrian’s desk.

 

“Your detention is with Coach Finstock this afternoon, Mr. Stilinski. I suggest that if you want to blackmail him, you use a different tactic.”

 

Stiles’ answer is a proudly raised middle finger as he flings himself out of the classroom.

  

* * *

 

 

Dinner with his parents is usually relaxed, the conversation boring and straightforward and a comfortable rehashing of the same discussion they’ve been having for fifteen years; the only change is of scenery. Tonight they’re at home; Adrian eats the same chicken casserole at the same kitchen table under the same ugly light fixture on the same straight-baked chair that he’s been eating and sitting at and under and on since he was 13.

                                

He wonders, as he’s wondered before, if his mother knows that she raised a pedophile. If his father can tell that their precious baby boy has crossed the line from being a self-loathing but morally responsible pervert to being a self-loathing sexual predator. Their latest dog doesn’t seem to have noticed any change, and dogs are supposed to be such great judges of character. He’s not entirely reassured by that.

 

He turns down his dad’s offer of a father-son smoke up in the back yard; if he’s going to be running the risk of being arrested by the sheriff for sleeping with his underage son, he’s going to do it able to pass drug tests. He doesn’t need to exacerbate his already criminal situation.

 

A tupperware full of leftover casserole is pressed into his hands as he leaves, like his mother’s forgotten that he’s pushing forty and can actually take care of himself.

 

He supposes that he probably can’t, really, and goes home with the intention of not stepping foot outside his front door all weekend.

  

* * *

 

 

Adrian isn’t actually surprised when he realizes he’s checking the weather report from Berkeley.

 

What surprises him is that it takes him so long to dress; he cannot come to a decision on what to wear. At one point he sees himself in the mirror, half-out of a t-shirt for a band he hasn’t listened to since grad school, and breaks down in hysterical, gasping laughter at his reflection. He looks like the creepy old guy at a concert, the one who’s way past his prime circle pit age and still trying way too hard to be cool. At least his jeans aren’t that skinny.

 

The absurdity of trying to dress for a teenager’s approval finally catches up with him and he shrugs on the first shirt that comes to hand out of his casual drawer, a little too tight for teaching in but definitely not bordering on circuit club appropriate. Contacts, rather than glasses- he wants to be able to see what he’s risking everything for- and he decides that if he needs to run from Chris Hansen and a camera crew, sneakers are probably better than loafers.

 

Well, he’ll probably just stand there and take his due punishment if this is all some elaborate set-up to get him on _To Catch a Predator_ , but sneakers anyway.

 

Adrian’s moment of truth comes when he’s got the key halfway into the ignition of his car, phone and ipod waiting patiently in the passenger seat and his travel cup with the molecular formula for caffeine on it steaming silently in its holder. If he turns on the car, and pulls out, that’s it. There’s no going back. Or he can go back inside and pretend he’s not spent an hour fussing over what he’s going to wear, and whether or not his condoms have expired (they haven’t), and sit quietly in a dark room until Monday rolls around and he has to deal with Stiles confronting him on campus again.

 

The quiet eco-friendly rumble of the engine starts up, the ipod kicks on with some shitty new punk band one of his old classmates sent him, and he backs out of his garage. It’s a three and a half hour drive to Berkeley if he obeys every posted speed limit, three flat if he drives the way everyone on 80 does and stops for coffee once. He doesn’t stop, and pulls off the freeway past a Target that hadn’t been there the last time he visited Cal, just as the sun sets behind the City and the bank of evening fog. He’s got time to kill before his- it’s not a date, really, and hookup sounds too casual, too adult, appointment too clinical and assignation too suave- _thing_ with Stiles, so he parks near campus. He wanders. He avoids the places his old professors, some of whom are probably still there, hang around and goes instead to his old studying hideaway. It’s a different independent coffee shop in the same place, different hungover trust-fund crusties behind the counter and the same stains on the linoleum floor. Berkeley never really changes.

 

Adrian’s phone buzzes insistently in his back pocket while he’s perusing the bookshelves at one of the weird, patchouli-reeking hippie stores that used to carry all the good books on alchemy and weird plant pseudo-science. He ignores the buzzing just as insistently until he’s found something he doesn’t already own, something over-priced and poorly printed but appealingly full of bizarre factoids and odd beliefs.

 

He pays cash and doesn’t take a receipt. By the time he checks his phone there are half a dozen texts from a number he doesn’t recognize; he can only assume they’re from Stiles. How Stiles got his number, he doesn’t really want to think about.

 

_are you coming or hwat_

_isee your car_

_hurry up and get your stupid book_

_are you ignorng me_

_dude seriously_

_finally_

 

Stiles is leaning awkwardly against a flyer-covered streetlight when Adrian emerges from the weedy, perfumed air the hippie shop, squinting against the bright light of his phone.

 

“So you made it.” Stiles adjusts the backpack he has slung over one shoulder and tugs his jacket down so it fits properly, so Adrian’s eyes are drawn back and forth between the exposed skin at the hollow of Stiles’ throat and the trim line of his waist.

 

“Yes, I did,” Adrian says, and reassures himself that in a college town no one’s going to look twice at an older man talking to someone who could easily be a freshman. No one knows who they are. No one cares. They stand two feet apart, both awkward, Adrian clutching his phone like a lifeline and Stiles with his hands shoved so deeply in his jacket pockets that it looks like seams might be straining. “I thought your campus visit was in the city.”

 

“Yeah, I drove down with Greenberg, we had to leave SF State early so he could load-in at Gilman with his stupid band, so I’ve been looking around here because Dad and Lydia want me to apply here too, and I saw your car and then I saw you and I figured I’d wait for you to come out but you took for _ever_ and it’s _cold_.”

 

“You’d do well here- _Greenberg_?” Adrian spits out the name. “Does he- did you tell-“

 

“He’s staying at some other band dude’s house nearby, he thinks I’m hooking up with a girl, and as long as you’re gone before like, noon, he’ll have no idea. Calm down, dude.” Stiles doesn’t sound nearly as blasé as he probably thinks he does, especially when he’s staring off over Adrian’s shoulder and not actually looking at Adrian. “But seriously, I’m freezing. I forgot how cold it gets down here at night. Buy me a coffee or something, yeah?”

 

Stiles’ lips are chapped, Adrian realizes when he watches Stiles lick them against the wind and the cold with the tip of his vulgarly pink tongue. Chapped and so _so_ red against his chilled-pale skin.

 

“There’s a place, two blocks,” Adrian mutters, and Stiles follows him quietly and too closely down the street to a different coffee shop. He stands by as Stiles orders, not some horrible Starbucks knockoff frilly sugared monstrosity but black coffee. He gets the same. The walk back to his car feels fraught, the bag with his shitty book bouncing against his thigh and the ostentatiously eco-friendly coffee cup barely keeping his fingers from burning and Stiles within arm’s reach.

 

“So you know where I’m staying, right?” Stiles demands while Adrian fumbles his keys out of his pocket beside the door. “You know how to get there? Because I have no idea where I am right now.”

  
“I lived here for seven years, I think I remember my way around pretty well,” he grumbles back. The car is unlocked and they pile in, Stiles with a heavy thud and Adrian more carefully, tossing his book down by Stiles’ feet without thinking and pulling the steering wheel to pull out.

 

They drive in silence but for the quiet, tinny songs coming out of his ipod and the drumming of Stiles’ fingers against the door to _Where Is My Mind_ and _Up the Wolves_.

 

“You have weird taste in music,” Stiles mutters at one point, as they round a corner into the dilapidated but quaint neighborhood of Victorians and bungalows. Adrian doesn’t watch as Stiles snatches up his ipod and goes flicking through it. “Seriously, weird. But cool.”

 

“Well I’m relieved that you think so,” Adrian snipes back.

  
“Whatever.” Stiles starts a new song, something Adrian doesn’t recognize immediately (he loads stuff when people send it to him and doesn’t get around to listening to all of it for a while sometimes), and drops the overpriced hunk of technology back in its compartment with a thud.

 

They’re nearly to the house.

 

He pulls to a stop two blocks away and parks.

 

“We’re not there yet,” Stiles points out helpfully, peeking at him from the corner of his eyes. Adrian nods.

 

“Look at it from my perspective. I just drove nearly two hundred miles to sleep with an underage student of mine, a boy, the sheriff’s kid. I think I’m allowed to be a little paranoid.” Adrian looks over at Stiles, helpless. By the light of the streetlamp down the block, he watches Stiles lick his lips again. He’s paralyzed. He will not be the one to suggest they go in, will not push Stiles for anything, but he wants so badly to run his fingers down the curve of Stiles’ waist and kiss the tips of his fingers and taste the coffee-tainted flavor of his mouth.

 

Stiles makes his decision for him. Adrian is kissed by Stiles at an awkward angle, dry lips pressing against his just long enough for the heat to register in his skin and make itself known deep in his guts.

 

“Yeah?” Stiles asks, and it’s loaded with promise and still so hesitant that it almost hurts, like Stiles is afraid Adrian is going to reject him when Adrian’s already risking so much for something he craves like oxygen.

 

He just nods.

 

Neither of them has taken off their seat belt yet.

 

They fumble themselves out of the car in unison. Without touching, without more than uncomfortably heated glances, they fall into lockstep on the sidewalk and grind fallen eucalyptus leaves underfoot with every pace.

 

“The key, shit, the key,” Stiles mumbles, breaking the quiet for the first time once they’re up the ramshackle porch of Stiles’ unnamed and conveniently absent friend. “She left… you’re standing on it.”   
  
Adrian looks down and realizes Stiles means the faded _Go Away_ mat he’s standing on; a few seconds later a key is located and they stumble into the dim hallway. The click of the deadbolt seems to be a cue to Stiles, who drops his backpack and reaches for a handful of Adrian’s shirt with slim fingers. Suddenly he has his arm around Stiles’ waist and a hand curling over Stiles’ shoulder and Stiles’ mouth hot against his. Stiles’ fingers are chilled against his cheek. Adrian leans back against the wall with Stiles pressed tight against him, leaning down to meet Stiles halfway.

 

It feels so very high school and sweet and desperate, and even though Adrian knows this means nothing to Stiles but access to his supplies and a cheap thrill, he pulls Stiles closer. Stiles’ kisses are greedy and sharp with the edges of his teeth. He slides his hand up over Stiles’ shoulder, over his slim throat and tilts his chin up for a better angle. There’s a skinny thigh pressed between his legs. Adrian clings and clutches to the rough cloth of Stiles’ jacket, low at his waist, while Stiles’ clever cold fingers creep under the edge of Adrian’s shirt.

 

“So, upstairs?” Stiles asks, his lips dragging across Adrian’s jaw so his skin feels like it’s about to blister and crack from the heat.

 

“I swear to god if Chris Hansen is up there you are going to fail chemistry,” Adrian mumbles against Stiles’ hairline. He gets a sharp burst of laughter at that.

 

“Apparently they don’t use real teenagers for that shit, so you’re safe with me.” Stiles hooks his fingers through Adrian’s belt loops and tugs his hips forward. He can feel the press of Stiles’ erection between layers of denim. “C’mon.”

 

Adrian follows close behind Stiles, dragged along by the front of his pants. The stairs prove difficult when Stiles won’t let go but they make it to the top without incident. Adrian slips his arms around Stiles’ waist from behind, kissing the back of his neck, his ear. Stiles lets him, for a minute, then shrugs him off. 

 

“The bedroom is _right there_ , dude,” he drawls, and drags Adrian forward. Adrian lingers in the doorway when he’s released. The bed looms large before him, even though it’s small, in a small room. The room seems even smaller when Stiles unzips his jacket and drops it carelessly to the floor; there’s a ribbon of exposed skin between Stiles’ shirt and his pants that makes Adrian want to drop to his knees and taste.   
  
“Stop lurking like a fucking creep and come here,” Stiles orders without turning around.  “Aren’t you supposed to be the experienced older pervert pushing my boundaries further or something? Take off your damn pants and make yourself useful.”

 

“I’ve never actually slept with one of my students before, so sorry if I’m not living up to your fantasy,” Adrian snaps. “I can see if I’ve got any wine coolers in the car if that’ll help the ambiance.”

 

“Yeah… you being a dick- not a part of the whole fantasy thing,” Stiles snaps back and turns. He looks nervous and _so young_ and Adrian feels more like even more of a dick.

 

“Stiles, you don’t have to do this.”

 

“Why do you keep _saying_ that? No one makes me do anything I don’t want to, okay? Not you, not Scott, not D- Dad. I can take care of my damn self and I want you to fuck me. If you don’t want to, get the fuck out. If you do, get over here and get started.” He gestures to his dick imperiously and Adrian steps forward involuntarily.

  
“I do, _Christ_ , Stiles, I want to.”

 

“Take off your shirt.” Adrian loses his jacket and his shirt in one movement. He drops them without thinking and feels exposed and utterly raw under Stiles’ scrutiny. “Come _here_.”

 

Adrian has his hands on Stiles’ hips and his mouth fastened to Stiles’ neck before he can think. He kisses the hollow of Stiles throat, up to the sharp curve of his jaw, tastes all the sweet skin he’s coveted for so long. He wonders how Stiles could even question how badly Adrian wants him when he’s practically shaking with it. His hands wander while Stiles grabs at his shoulders and holds him. It should be laughable, how Stiles is the steady one and Adrian can’t figure out what to do with his hands, first clutching at his hips then his shoulders and then hesitantly stroking the bare skin of Stiles’ cheek.

 

“You should blow me,” Stiles suggests, and he’s gratifyingly breathless. His words sear Adrian to the core. Adrian kisses him once, with more feeling than he should, kisses his beautiful vulgar mouth before dropping to his knees. Familiar territory, this, though now his fears of being interrupted are negligible. He mouths the skin above Stiles’ jeans as he fumbles them open, memorizes the taste of sweat and the texture of dark hair on pale skin.

 

Adrian tugs the faded denim and surprisingly tight, fashionable underwear down over Stiles’ ass so his erection is out. Stiles’ hands rest on his shoulders, pulling him closer; he resists and takes a moment to just _look_. He kisses the prominent blade of Stiles’ hipbone, sucks briefly at the juncture of thigh and torso on the other side. Stiles deserves to be adored. Worshiped. Adrian will be his devotee, even if it’s just this once, especially if it’s just this once.

 

Stiles pushes more insistently on his shoulders. “Hurry _up_ ,” he whines.

  
“Be patient.” But Adrian’s had enough of teasing, and wraps his hand around Stiles’ cock. He strokes slowly, still pressing kisses to the skin he can reach.

 

“Patience is _not_ one of my virtues,” Stiles snaps. Adrian winces as strong fingers close around a fistful of his hair and tug.

  
“Fine. Fine.” Adrian follows the insistent pull on his hair and draws Stiles’ cock into his mouth. He’ll take his time, this round, since he couldn’t before. He lets his hands slide up the backs of Stiles’ slim sturdy thighs to the curve of his ass, which is firm though not full; Stiles has the sort of white boy non-ass that Adrian finds so appealing. His knees ache distantly as he brings his distressingly large number of years of experience in blowjobs to bear on Stiles.

 

He doesn’t try to make it showy, because he’s fairly certain Stiles’ eyes are closed anyway, just _good_. He swallows and lets Stiles fuck his mouth in greedy little pushes.

 

The part of himself that he hates, (one of the parts of himself that he hates) that gets possessive and dangerous about the boys he shouldn’t want, wants to burn himself into Stiles’ skin the way Stiles has burned into his.

 

“Shit, you’re. You’re good at this,” Stiles gasps and he sounds miles away. It doesn’t sound forced or practiced or even pornographic; he sounds surprised, and it is sweet in Adrian’s ears. His fist has relaxed and he’s rubbing absently at Adrian’s scalp and clutching at his shoulder with the other hand. Adrian’s hair will be in knots but he doesn’t care. “You should stop, I mean. I’m gonna. And I do want you to fuck me, I’m serious, c’mon.”

 

“I will, I swear, just let me have this. Please.” Adrian pulls off and buries his face in the crease of Stiles’ thigh and hip, inhales deeply and savors the smell of sex and sweat and Stiles.

 

“Fine, just do _something_.” Stiles whines, pushing his hips forward. Adrian gets back to it, palming his ass and swallowing him down like his life depends on it. When Stiles’ breath gets short, shallow, like the movement of his hips, Adrian slides his thumb down the crack of Stiles’ ass. He presses, just gently, the lightest pressure, against the pucker of his asshole.

 

“Shiiiiit,” Stiles gasps, and his fingers tighten in Adrian’s hair as he comes. Adrian swallows and swallows. He holds Stiles tight as he shudders through his orgasm and comes up for air only when Stiles pushes him back. “Holy shit, dude.”  
  
“How many times do I have to tell you not to call me dude?” Adrian mutters against the sweat-damp thatch of Stiles’ pubic hair.

 

“Well it feels weird calling you Mr. Harris when you just sucked my brains out my dick,” Stiles retorts, tugging on a lock of his hair in what feels almost like affection but is probably nothing. Adrian looks up at him. Stiles is smiling, a quirk of his lips that doesn’t seem false. “And I mean, just because I’m kind of gagging for it now doesn’t actually mean I’ve got like, a _teacher thing_ , you just happen to be a, _my_ , teacher, and you’re kind of really hot, and kind of useful, sooo.”

 

“I guess I don’t have to worry about you trying to seduce Wilson, then.” Adrian rubs his thumb over Stiles’ hipbone contemplatively. Stiles’ burst of laughter is contagious and Adrian smiles up at him like the besotted idiot he is.

 

“Ew. Ew ew ew god no. Wilson is like, two Hectors put together.”

 

“You can call me Adrian. Since it’s my name. Here, I mean, if you call me Adrian in school-“

 

“I’ll fail chemistry. Yeah, I know.” Stiles hooks long fingers under Adrian’s jaw and tugs upwards; Adrian clambers to his feet until he’s standing straight and looking down at Stiles’ relaxed grin. “So.”  
  
“So.”

 

“Adrian.”

 

“Yes, that is my name, and don’t pretend you didn’t already know it.”

 

“You’ve blown me twice now and not gotten anything for it,” Stiles says quietly. His hands are low on Adrian’s hips, toying with the  loops of his jeans, then the pockets, then tentatively brushing over his trapped hard on.

 

“Your point?” Adrian at least has enough control over his body’s reactions now that he doesn’t jerk forward to grind against Stiles’ hand like an out-of-control teenager. He settles his hands on Stiles’ waist.

 

“You can fuck me now, if you want.”  Stiles’ hand grows bolder, more confident, and gropes Adrian through his jeans. Deep, calming breaths become necessary.

 

“Do you have. Supplies. Lube.” Adrian will not, will _absolutely not_ , go any further until he knows he’ll not hurt Stiles in this.

 

“Yeah, duh, I’m like the Boy Scout of buttfucking,” Stiles says, and Adrian groans.

 

“Every time I think you’ve maxed out the ways to make me feel creepy about this, I’m proven wrong and you make it worse,” Adrian informs him. He kisses Stiles’ temple and lets the bristle of his buzzcut rasp against his skin. 

 

“It’s a gift. And lube’s in my backpack. Which… is… downstairs.” It’s Stile’s turn to groan. “I’m a dumbass. I feel bad making you do stairs with a boner but dude- sorry- my knees are like jello and man I don’t want you to have to explain why you’re calling an ambulance for me when I fall down the stairs and get a concussion.”

 

Adrian laughs. “It’s fine, it’s fine,” he says. Admittedly, he’s not totally enthused about negotiating the narrow stairs of the old house, but he drags himself away from the warmth of Stiles’ arms and shivers his way down. At least Stiles’ backpack had been dropped in the middle of the damn floor so he didn’t have to go far to look for it. A thud from upstairs is followed by muffled swearing and he laughs to himself as he heads back up. The backpack rattles with every step, soft tinkles of glass he hadn’t noticed on the noisy streets earlier.

 

“What’s taking you so long,” Stiles drawls from the bed. Adrian takes in a harsh breath of air. Stiles has lost his t-shirt, jeans and shoes in Adrian’s absence, and is lounging on the bed in a lazy sprawl. He’s naked but for his undershirt, sinfully, twinkishly tight underwear, and- and Adrian finds this beyond adorable- he still has his socks on. “Don’t look at me like that, I am delicate and fragile and my toes get cold. Now get your ass over here and do something more interesting than standing there staring at me like I’ve got three heads and two dicks.”

 

“I’m looking at you like you’re gorgeous,” he blurts out.

 

“You’re so weird.” Stiles crosses his arms over his chest and jerks his chin imperiously. Adrian obeys the unspoken order to approach, bringing the backpack with him. Stiles takes it from him as Adrian sits beside him. By the time he’s got his shoes and socks off and tucked side-by-side next to the bed, his wallet on the nightstand and the condom waiting on top of that, Stiles has discarded the backpack again, the sounds of glass rattling even louder. The small bottle of lube that gets dropped into his lap is followed by Stiles’ fingers, sliding over his thigh.

 

Adrian catches Stiles’ fingers before they can get to his fly. “Are you su-“

 

“Look. How about we just go with _until I say no_ you can assume _fuck yes_ for the rest of this sexual encounter,” Stiles says. He shakes his hand free from Adrian’s and goes for his fly again. “I want you to put your dick up my ass and fuck me ‘til we both come. Clear enough for you?”

 

“Crystal.” But he hesitates still, until Stiles gets impatient and tugs him down at an angle that makes his back ache but puts his mouth within reach of Stiles’ delicious collarbones. A few moments of shifting and fidgeting finds him on his back with Stiles’ weight pressing him down into the mattress.

 

He loses track then, when Stiles leans forward and kisses him with heat and sharp teeth, and a slow vulgar roll of his hips against Adrian’s. Adrian allows his hands to wander, down Stiles’ back to his narrow waist and the curve of his ass. He fondles, _squeezes_ , just to feel the resistance of youthful flesh under his hand. He reaches past the edges of Stiles’ underwear. He drags his hands over the backs of Stiles’ thighs, feeling the faint rasp of dark hair and soft skin under his palms. He pulls forward in time with one of Stiles’ slow grinds and they both make quiet noises.

 

Stiles grows impatient. And hard. Adrian thinks these might be related situations.

 

“Take off your goddamn pants,” Stiles orders, when another roll at just the right angle makes them both groan.

 

“You’ll have to get off me,” Adrian says and then makes no effort whatsoever to let go of Stiles’ legs. Stiles snorts. Abruptly the hot weight of teenage boy pressing him down is gone, as Stiles rises onto his knees so Adrian and struggle out of his pants.

 

He is completely naked. He feels more exposed than he has in years, _ever_ , when Stiles makes a greedy noise and grabs at his own, still-clothed crotch with one hand and running a hand over Adrian’s stomach at the same time. Adrian reaches for the bottle.

 

Stiles watches his hands as he opens it. The scrutiny unnerves him again, and he fumbles as he slicks his fingers. It splatters quietly on his stomach.

 

When he reaches for Stiles, with wet fingers and steeled nerves, Stiles shoves his underwear down off his ass, just far enough for Adrian to have unfettered access to his hole. He hesitates, just for a second. Stiles’ look of anticipation urges him on. Finally, fucking _finally_ , he pushes the tip of his middle finger past beautifully tight muscle (and oh god, does he suddenly wish he’d buried his face in Stiles’ ass and rimmed him ‘til he cried) and Stiles’ whole body shudders over him.

 

“Do _something_ ,” Stiles orders. Adrian clutches Stiles’ thigh with his other hand, the one he doesn’t intend on lovingly, carefully, fingerfucking him open with, and  begins to slowly, lovingly, so so so carefully, fingerfuck Stiles open.

 

It’s stunning. Adrian takes his time, chasing down the things that make Stiles bite his lip and dig his nails into Adrian’s stomach, shying away from what makes him flinch. The blush that spreads from Stiles’ cheeks down his obscene throat to his shoulders is _beautiful_. He watches as Stiles’ hands flutter, first rubbing at his own half-clothed cock, then Adrian’s, then touching his mouth, his still-covered chest, Adrian’s stomach.

 

“Gimme another, shit,” Stiles gasps, and he sounds as undone as Adrian feels. The noise he gives out when Adrian pushes his index finger in is thready, greedy and high in his throat. His thighs tremble under Adrian’s grip. He rides Adrian’s fingers with short rolls of his hips, in time with the motion of Adrian’s wrist, until he groans and collapses forward in a boneless, sweaty heap across Adrian’s chest.

 

“C’mon, stop fucking teasing me,” he whines into Adrian’s throat. “Just fuck me already.”

 

“Not teasing. I swear to god I’m not teasing. Soon,” Adrian promises, kissing the top of Stiles’ head. He’s desperate, too, and it gets worse when Stiles starts grinding against him again. But he won’t rush this.

 

“Put another finger  or your dick in me or I’ll fucking scream.” Stiles props himself up on an elbow and smashes his mouth against Adrian’s so hard he’s pretty sure someone’s going to bleed, but Adrian is nothing if not obedient. More lube, another finger; his free hand slides up the back of Stiles’ thigh to fondle his ass like the pervert he is. It’s not so much kissing now as desperately breathing the same air and occasionally biting.

 

His wrist is straining from the awkward angle, tired, when Stiles asks for it. “ _Please_ , please will you just fuck me? Jesus _fuck_ ,” he pleads, lips dragging over Adrian’s skin, nails dragging audibly over sheets and his hips pressing back lewdly against his fingers. “I think I’m gonna explode if you don’t, try explaining _that_ to the cops.”

 

Adrian stops groping Stiles’ ass like a horny teenager and grabs for his chin instead, tilting his face up so he can be kissed properly.

 

“Please?” Stiles asks again, and it’s quieter, unsure, like he can’t tell how badly Adrian aches for him.

 

“Yes, god, _yes_ , just…” He eases his fingers free and reaches for the condom. While he fidgets with the packet, opening it carefully but so clumsily with slick, stupid fingers, Stiles rolls off him. By the time Adrian has it on and slicked with more lube, Stiles is on his belly, underwear gone, watching him with wide but oh-so-guarded eyes. “God, you’re beautiful,” he blurts, stupid with want and relief and overwhelmed by Stiles’ _everything_.

 

“Shut up,” Stiles mutters, and looks away. “C’mon, _please_.” Adrian reaches for him, to pull him closer and have him back on top, because he wants Stiles to have control, because he wants to watch Stiles come apart, but Stiles resists. “I want it like this,” he says, and Adrian can only obey as he has obeyed every other demand.

 

It hits him suddenly, how much shorter and leaner Stiles is than him, when he crawls over him and slips into position. He covers Stiles’ body with his own and feels a surge of painfully ironic protectiveness wash over him; he wants to guard Stiles from harm even as he aligns their hips and lets his cock rut up against Stiles’ ass. Stiles pushes back onto his knees, arching his back with youthful, catlike grace.

 

Adrian pushes in when Stiles pushes back and they both groan, Adrian low, vulgar, Stiles high and desperate. Adrian buries his face in the curve of Stiles’ shoulder as he grinds inexorably forward, slow and steady, until he is flush against Stiles’ hips and their thighs are tangled and Stiles’ fingers weave through his at the top of the mattress.

 

They’re both frozen for what feels like an eternity, panting quietly. Stiles moves first, a slow roll of his spine from shoulder to hip that makes Adrian grit his teeth against the fear of coming too soon. He takes that as his cue, though, to start fucking him with deep, slow thrusts. He holds Stiles’ hip with one hand, clings to his fingers with the other and pretends that it means something when Stiles turns his head to kiss him.

 

 “M’not gonna break if you do it harder.” Stiles’ fingers tighten around Adrian’s for a fleeting moment, and he sounds like his usual cocky self, if quieter and more fucked out. Adrian laughs despite himself, breathless against Stiles’ cheek, and Stiles smiles. He obeys. He’ll always obey.

 

It takes a few tries to find something that works for both of them, though Adrian worries far more about Stiles’ reactions than his own; he waits for the hitch of Stiles’ breath and the greedy push back, or the airy _oh shit_ that signals when he’s done something right.  Stiles likes it slow but hard, he comes to conclude, he swears when it’s _good_ and goes silent when it’s not, and Adrian tries to wring as many quiet _fucks_ and _shits_ out of his sinful mouth as possible. It’s slower than Adrian likes, really, but it drags it out, gives him more time to kiss the knife edge of Stiles’ jaw and feel the boy shivering under his hands.

 

The bed creaks quietly when Adrian adjusts their position slightly, urging Stiles’ chest down and his hips back, nudging his knees further apart. The shift does wonders for both of them; Stiles _wails_ when Adrian shoves in deeper and Adrian sucks in a sharp breath in response. He rocks against Stiles, faster now, but still steady and deep. Stiles obliges him with a steady stream of profanity, creatively strung together curses and pleas, and always the eager roll of his hips in time with Adrian’s thrusts.

 

His feelings are stung briefly, stupidly, when Stiles tugs his fingers loose from Adrian’s grip after long, quiet minutes (Stiles is so much quieter than Adrian expected; the constant recitation of vulgarities is emphatic and seems heartfelt, but barely louder than a whisper), but when Adrian realizes it’s to stroke himself off the sting of rejection fades.

 

“Let me,” he begs, his own greed for whatever Stiles will let him have overwhelming him again. His hand wraps around the base of Stiles’ cock loosely, so the force of his hips from behind lets Stiles fuck his hand. It’s too dry for Stiles’ taste apparently, because Stiles pulls it away from his dick, up to his mouth, and licks his palm, sucks down his fingers so eagerly Adrian feels teeth and sees stars. Then his hand is forced back down.

 

Time slows to a syrupy standstill while he fucks Stiles on a stranger’s guest bed in a city where no one cares who they are or what they do. His orgasm builds, curling around the base of his spine and drawing his balls tight against his body as he ruts into Stiles again and again. He tries to take calming breaths, deep breaths, tries to think of things to hold off coming and drag this out.

 

Stiles’ cursing breaks down into wordless whimpers and his movements grow jerky. Adrian kisses the freckles on his shoulders. He wishes that he’d gotten Stiles’ shirt off when he gets a mouthful of cotton instead of sweaty skin, but it’s altogether too late for that. His hand is damp from more than Stiles’ spit as he grips tighter, starts jerking him off instead of just letting Stiles fuck his hand.

 

“Come on, Stiles,” he urges, resisting the urge to fall into the rote crudities of anonymous sex. Stiles deserves better than meaningless dirty talk. He is so close, _so_ close, but he wants Stiles to go off first.

 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Stiles whimpers. It sounds like he’s got a mouthful of pillow. Adrian shifts again, so all it takes are short shoves forward to have Stiles gasping out harsh cries and spurting over Adrian’s fingers. “God, _shit_ , De- _Adrian_.”

 

Adrian jerks him through it, ignores the grinding of his guts that knows Stiles just corrected himself for saying someone else’s name. He comes like a punch in the belly, spilling into the condom and groaning into the damp skin of Stiles’ throat. He holds Stiles tight, gasping his name like the pathetic excuse of a man he is, until Stiles shakes him off.

 

“So that happened,” Stiles gasps, sprawled over half the bed so Adrian has to cling to the edge as he disposes of the condom. He feels exposed again. He rolls onto his stomach beside Stiles but doesn’t touch him. He’s not sure if he’s welcome. Stiles is peeking at him over the curve of his shoulder.

 

“Yeah. It did.”

 

“I mean, it was kind of great?” Stiles smiles a little, and Adrian hesitantly reaches for him, sliding his arm around his waist. Stiles takes it as an invitation to curl closer and drapes an arm over Adrian’s shoulders, runs fingers through his hair. “Like, I mean, kind of really great.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“What, you want a play-by-play of _oh my god your dick is amazing_?”

 

Adrian snorts. “No, I’m fine with just the sentiment,” he says, and kisses Stiles. Who kisses back, and laughs when Adrian bites at the curve of his smile. “Unless you really want to tell me all about it.”  
  
“You’re so _weird_.”

 

“Likewise.” Adrian’s hand is sliding lower down Stiles’ back, maybe ten minutes and who knows how many damning kisses later, when a phone rattles and vibrates aggressively somewhere in the room.

 

“I have to get that,” Stiles says. It almost sounds apologetic, and he’s slow to pull away, but then he’s digging through his backpack, back turned on Adrian and sheets pulled around his hips like a barrier between them. “ _What_?”  
  
The acid in Stiles’ voice takes him aback and he is intensely relieved that he’s not on the other end of that phone. Adrian sits up, pointedly not watching the way Stiles’ shoulders go tense. “I _can’t_. I’m in- I’m out of town. You know that. No, just- I don’t have the Jeep. Gimme. _Shut up,_ gimme a second.”

 

Stiles turns to him. “Do you mind, like five minutes?” he asks, like he’s interrupting a date with his phone call. Adrian nods and slips out of bed, grabs his pants and jacket so he can check his own phone. He dresses in the hall, trying not to eavesdrop on Stiles’ hissed side of the conversation. When Stiles’ volume climbs, he descends the stairs.

 

Adrian slips barefoot through the house in search of the kitchen.

 

“No, _fuck you_ ,” Stiles yells distantly. Adrian flinches, and finds glasses, gulps down water and fills the other for Stiles. He fidgets through his phone. It’s only 9:43. It feels later. It’s chilly; outside the fog presses against the windows so he feels isolated from the rest of the world. The fog has the faint orange tint he remembers, light pollution bouncing between water molecules suspended in air. He shoves his phone back in his pocket and pulls his pants back up on his hips where they’ve slid down. It sounds like Stiles is pacing upstairs, though the yelling’s stopped.

 

He stares out the window into the dim orange soup. The sweat on his skin is drying and stale and prickling. He smells like a locker room.

 

He wonders why he’s still around, why he’s been exiled to the kitchen while his teenage puppetmaster fights with what he’s assuming is an ex, probably one of the other older men that Stiles apparently attracts like perverse moths to an illegal flame.

 

“GO TO HELL,” Stiles yells, and then there’s an outraged, painful-sounding noise and the distinctive noise of a teenage body flinging itself onto an old mattress. He doesn’t quite dare to face Stiles’ wrath yet.

 

Stiles apparently wants his wrath faced. He comes down the stairs like a herd of angry elephants a few minutes later and hops up onto the counter next to Adrian. He takes the glass of water Adrian offers him silently and knocks it back.

 

“At the risk of sounding like an after school special, and a _massive_ hypocrite, you know you can tell me if someone’s hurting you,” Adrian says after a prolonged period of awkward silence.

 

Stiles laughs in his face. “You couldn’t handle this even if you were morally upright or whatever, trust me. And he’s not _hurting me_ or anything, and neither are you, I mean, he’s just a dick who doesn’t get that breaking up means I’m even _less_ likely to drop everything and come running for him than when we were dating. Well. Dating. I say dating, I mean fucking and then him getting all weird about it after like 3 weeks, like I was gonna marry him and be his child bride and have his assbabies at seventeen or whatever.”

 

Adrian chokes on his own water. “Please, for the love of god, for the love of _science_ , please never enlighten me about _assbabies._ ”

 

The glint in Stiles’ eye is unholy. “Now, Mr Adrian, when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much, but only ever have unprotected ana-“

 

“Didn’t you want pizza or something,” Adrian interrupts rapidly, before his night can get _so much worse_. He may have clapped a hand over Stiles’ mouth though he’ll never admit it, ever. _Assbabies_ , what the hell.

 

“I always want pizza,” Stiles informs him, after not peeling the hand Adrian didn’t put over his mouth off. “And I believe that may have been part of the deal. You come here, you fuck me, you order me pizza, and I’m willing to extend this to having a second round of post-prandial sex depending on how the good pizza is.”

 

* * *

 

 

The pizza, as it turns out, is kind of shitty.

 

Stiles has very low standards for pizza.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Explicit sex between consenting individuals, though one party is underage. Warnings for the first section are still in effect, with heightened warning for references to emotionally abusive previous relationship.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Monday is almost painfully normal. Nothing explodes, no one dies, Stiles only mouths off a little and with only the faintest curve of his mouth for Adrian to pin his hopes on.

Waking up with Stiles mouthbreathing into his shoulder is definitely not what he’d expected when he got in his car yesterday, but he has to admit it’s pretty great.

 

He reaches for his phone to check the time and remembers he left it on the counter downstairs, having been slightly too distracted by Stiles’ mouth on his chest, really, the tease of teeth on his nipple. Stiles’ phone isn’t within easy reach, either. He’s no idea what time it is, the fog outside the window turns the light into a nondescript grey, but he thinks it’s early still. He feels disgracefully well rested, even though he never sleeps past eight or so, even on weekends, especially not when he’s sharing a bed. Especially not when his contacts are making his eyes sting and itch from sleeping in them like a fucking idiot.

 

Stiles is not a pretty sleeper the way some of his past partners have been, who looked like angels when they slept and like fashion plates when they woke up. Stiles is drooling into the pillow where his face fell when Adrian moved, and his face is scrunched up like he’s smelled something rank in his dreams. He looks young, though, unspoiled by Adrian and men like him, like the ex whose calls get answered even when Stiles is in bed with someone else.

 

“Stiles.” He nudges Stiles’ shoulder gently, and repeats his name.

  
“Fuck off,” Stiles says distinctly, without so much as a flutter of his lashes to indicate he’s waking up. He can’t help but smile at Stiles’ resistance to waking up. On the other hand, Adrian has pretty much reached his maximum levels of decadence for the weekend. Lolling around in bed waiting for Stiles to wake up, while still smelling like two men’s worth of sweat and sex and probably with Stiles’ come still on his stomach, is really just too much. He allows himself a single brush of his hand over Stiles’ cheek before hauling his disgusting, smelly carcass out of bed.

 

The bathroom is easy enough to find; the shower takes a few ridiculous moments to figure out (fucking showers, how do they _work_ ) but then he’s standing under the stream of hot water that smells faintly of chlorine. Someone got chemical happy in water purification again, apparently. He borrows their host’s shampoo and feels vaguely guilty about it, but that fades by the time he’s toweling off and pulling his jeans back up over his hips.

 

Stiles is still asleep when Adrian sticks his head back into the bedroom. In his absence, Stiles has colonized the whole bed, sprawled out inelegantly across the mattress. Adrian leans against the doorframe, feeling like an utter creep for watching him, but Stiles’ shirt has ridden up over his ribs. Adrian can almost count the peaks of his vertebrae, but more disturbing is the faintly pink shine of a scar wrapping around the back of his ribs. He wonders if that’s why Stiles wouldn’t take his shirt off last night when Adrian pushed it up hopefully.

 

“You’re bein’ creepy,” Stiles mumbles into the pillow.

 

“Sorry.” He isn’t.

 

“No you’re not.” Stiles pulls the sheets over his head and flails around, then emerges again, sleepy but smiling. “You’re still here.”  
  
“Where else would I be?” He hovers at the door a moment, then shuffles back to the bed to sit beside Stiles.

 

“You could’ve left, you got what you wanted,” Stiles says, and Adrian can hear the undertones of _you wouldn’t be the first_ in it.

 

Adrian frowns. “That’s not.” He hesitates. “I’m not just. Why do you think I’m here?”

 

“Because I’m blackmailing you with my sweet teenage jailbait ass?”

 

“Okay, yeah, that’s why I’m _here_ , here, but… you wouldn’t have anything to hold over me if I didn’t _want_ to be here. With you.” He runs his fingers through his hair in frustration and wipes his now-damp palms on his jeans. He’s a fucking chemist, not a poet. “I’m not. I’ve never.”

 

“You’re a pedophile,” Stiles says matter-of-factly, like it explains everything.

 

“No. Yes. Kind of. No! I’m an ephebephile, there’s a _difference_. I don’t fuck children, Jesus, I like teenagers. I’m fucking wrong in the head and I’m a criminal but I’m not _that_ sick, and _I have never acted on this before_. You. I just. If it was anyone else, Stiles, I wouldn’t even have been fucking _tempted_.”

 

Stiles’s eyes are wide in his face. “So. If Jackson had tried-“

 

“Jackson is an aggravating, tedious little shit whose ego doesn’t need that kind of stroking, I don’t care how perfect he thinks his hair is.” Adrian resists the urge to rub at his eyes; it will only exacerbate the itching and the frustration. “To be perfectly, painfully honest, I kind of thought you’d kick me out after you got what _you_ wanted.”

 

“Oh.” Stiles clearly means several things by his small noise of understanding, but Adrian’ll be damned if he can figure out what. Adrian watches expressions fly across his face in rapid succession and can’t read any of them, and wonders if maybe kissing the twisted-up curve of Stiles’ mouth would solve any of this. He doubts that it would. Abruptly Stiles shakes his head, like he’s clearing his mind, and grins. “So that was way too heavy way too early, and I kind of can’t process this level of information and or feelings at whatever the fuck o’clock it is in the morning, so I’m gonna take a shower and then you can buy me breakfast or something and treat a girl properly like a real gentleman.”

 

“If you were a girl and I was a _gentleman_ I’d expect you to make me breakfast,” Adrian mutters, and Stiles jerks a bit before breaking out in a sharp burst of laughter.

 

“That’s _sexism_ , you piece of shit,” Stiles crows. He shoves the sheets down and flings himself into Adrian’s personal space, arms around his neck and mouth planted roughly against his. “I want bacon, find a place that has good bacon.” And just as fast, Stiles is out of his arms and lurching towards the bathroom, scratching his ass through his underwear as he goes.

 

Adrian collapses backwards onto the bed in a supremely juvenile manner that he isn’t particularly proud of.

 

“BACON, Harris, I want BACON,” Stiles yells from the bathroom just before the water starts up, and Adrian laughs in spite of himself.

 

He’s so completely fucked.

 

He drags himself downstairs to get his phone, which hopefully has enough of a charge left to find somewhere to eat; he’s pretty certain at least one of the diners from when he was in school is still open. He side eyes the coffee pot and decides it’s not worth it, if they’re going to just go get breakfast anyways.

 

His phone is still in the middle of the counter, next to the empty pizza box. No missed calls, no surprise.

 

The time, however, is a surprise.

 

“STILES.” He takes a long hard look at the clock in the oven.

 

“WHAT.”

 

He looks back at his phone. The microwave is the same as his phone and the oven.

 

Fuck. _Fuck_.

 

He hauls ass up the stairs. “What time is Greenberg coming?” he calls from the bedroom door, turning his shirt inside out and shrugging it back on.

 

“Like, 11:45, noon, why?” The sound of the shower curtain pulling back is followed by the water shutting off and the splatting thud of bare wet feet on tile.

 

“It’s 11:47, that’s why.”

 

“SHIT!”

 

Stiles skids out of the bathroom, pulling his shirt down with one hand and holding up the towel with the other. “Where’s my phone, where’s my phone mother _fuck_ ,” he chants, digging through his pile of shit on the floor. Adrian is fumbling his shoelaces into something resembling a knot that’ll hold up long enough to get to his car while Stiles alternates between searching for his phone and pulling on pants.

 

“YES.” Stiles raises the phone like a trophy for a second, then actually checks it. “Scott Scott Lydia GREENBERG Greenberg… You’ve got approximately six minutes, go go go go,” he says. Adrian tugs the laces into submission and they both tear down the stairs, Adrian patting down his pockets for keys and- quick detour to the kitchen for his wallet, shit- and phone. When Adrian reaches for the doorknob, he finds himself knocked back against the wall with an armful of damp teenage boy.

 

“Stiles, Greenburg is going to be here in like four minutes, I have to go,” he protests, even though his hands are low on Stiles’ waist. Stiles shoves against him and kisses him, and it’s painfully sweet and insistent. “ _Stiles_.”

 

“See you tomorrow?”

 

“If your father doesn’t shoot me first,” Adrian mutters, dragging his hands off Stiles’ hips.

 

“He won’t if you get out of here,” Stiles says, and kisses him again before backing off. “When do I get my agar?”

  
“It’s supposed to come in Tuesday, I’ll bring it to school Wednesday. Do your homework,” he rattles off as he pulls the door open.

 

“Fuck off!”

 

Stile’s laughing echoes behind him as he runs down the street to his car to beat Greenburg’s arrival.

 

* * *

 

 

Monday is almost painfully normal. Nothing explodes, no one dies, Stiles only mouths off a little and with only the faintest curve of his mouth for Adrian to pin his hopes on.

 

When he turns back quizzes from the week before, he manages to not touch Stiles, to not congratulate him on getting the highest grade in class.

 

It’s a small victory.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s 7:14 on Tuesday night when Adrian trips over long legs blocking the hall to his apartment. He nearly drops the box of petri dishes.

 

“I think you broke my leg,” Stiles whines from the floor.

 

“How the hell- you can’t _be_ here,” Adrian snaps, hauling Stiles up and hustling him down the hall, into the relative shelter of his apartment. “How long have you been waiting?”

 

“Like forty five minutes, where the hell were you?”

 

“At the gym. Did anyone see you?” Adrian resists the urge to peek out the window to see if anyone’s watching his apartment; there are levels of paranoia he cannot let himself sink to.

 

Stiles flops down on his sofa like he owns the place. “You go to the gym?”  
  
“Yes. Why are you here?”

 

“I need somewhere to do my homework, and you said the stuff was coming today, and I figured it’d save explaining why the hell you’re giving me a bunch of shit to take home when you’re such a hardass at school. Seriously, you go to the gym?”  
  
“I’m thirty-eight, I can’t stay in shape by jerking off and not eating that fifth poptart any more.”

 

Stiles snorts and starts digging through his backpack. The rattle of glass fills his living room and Adrian wonders what the hell he has in there. “Fair enough. Do you have poptarts, though?”

 

“You can’t stay, Stiles, we’re not two hundred miles away from a town where everyone knows everyone else’s damn business. Everyone knows _who you are_.” He holds the box out for Stiles.

 

“Dude, no one saw me, I rode my bike, and no one gives a fuck about what _you_ do so shut up and let me do my homework. Willis hates me even more than you do and I need an A on this paper.”

 

“ _Stiles_.”

 

“ _What_.” Stiles’ mimicry of him is beyond irritating, as is the fact that the damn kid refuses to look up from the binder he’s spread out on Adrian’s coffee table.

 

Adrian opens his mouth, closes it without saying anything, chokes on another protest and gives up. He rolls his eyes and throws his hands up. “Fine. But you can only stay until nine, alright? I will throw you out on your ass. I have to get shit done for class tomorrow. And I’m not- _not_ \- feeding you.”

 

“You’re the best.” Stiles waves at him absently. Adrian rolls his eyes again and retreats to the safety of his kitchen.

 

The miracle is that he actually manages to _get_ shit done, plowing through grading and getting the lesson plan fine-tuned for the prep classes on Thursday. At one point he toes off his shoes and gets comfortable, forgetting for a few minutes that the delicious bane of his existence is twenty feet away and ready to pounce at the first moment of weakness.

 

“Can I borrow this?” Stiles asks, slouching through the doorway to deposit himself across from Adrian at the kitchen table.  
  
“No.” He doesn’t look up until Stiles kicks him under the table and shoves a book across his lesson plan. It’s a translation of Donnolo’s _Antidotarium_ that had been a textbook in grad school, battered to pieces. “Why the hell do you want to borrow that?”

 

“Because _reasons_.”

 

“No.”

 

“I just want to make photocopies of some of it.”

 

“No, Stiles.”

 

“Come _oooon_.” Stiles kicks him again. Adrian catches his foot between his own ankles.

 

“Do you even know what this is, or are you just trying to see what you can wring out of me?” Adrian lets Stiles’ ankle go when he tugs on it.

 

“I need it for _independent research_ , okay? Call it extracurricular college preparation work if that helps,” Stiles pulls the book back.

 

“No.” He looks at the clock. “You have thirty seven minutes before I physically remove you from my apartment. Finish your homework.”

 

Stiles kicks him again. “You _suck_.”

 

“You weren’t complaining about that on Saturday. Now do your homework or get the hell out. This isn’t Starbucks, you can’t just hang out in my kitchen.” Adrian pushes the book off his papers and his glasses back up his nose emphatically. Stiles’ snort of derision does little to sway him; he is irritated at the intrusion into his home, at his own weakness at letting Stiles through the front door, and most of all at the assumption that blackmailing him will give Stiles an all-access pass to his life. No. It gets him orgasms and supplies and Adrian’s paranoid devotion, but not his kitchen table. Not his books. Even his boyfriends never got books.

 

He doesn’t get to act like Adrian’s his boyfriend.

 

“You could suck me off now,” Stiles suggests. It’s Adrian’s turn to snort. One unforeseen benefit of having been balls-deep in Stiles’ ass, twice, is that at least he’s managed to get his reactions to Stiles’ attempts at being shocking under control.

 

“I don’t feel like it.” That’s a lie. He would love to have his mouth on Stiles’ cock again, and again, and again.

 

“You could fuck me.”

 

“If you wanted to get laid, you should’ve said that an hour ago. I’m not racing the clock just so you can get your rocks off and get out of here by nine.” Stiles really does do aggrieved and insulted very well, as he aptly demonstrates by flinging his weight backwards in Adrian’s kitchen chair and nearly toppling the damn thing. Adrian deigns to look at him and is immediately annoyed at himself for doing so; the way Stiles’ mouth hangs open when he’s gaping in frustration is too, too inviting.

 

“Aren’t you supposed to do whatever I say so I don’t tell my dad exactly how many sex acts you have performed on a minor?” Stiles whines. He lurches out of the chair and leans over the table. He invades Adrian’s space, _again_. 

 

“If I don’t get this lesson plan done, I won’t have a job for you to hold over my head,” Adrian mutters, ignoring the skip in his own pulse at Stiles’ sudden proximity.

 

“Yeah, well… there’s jail time?”

 

“You’re better at blowing shit up in lab than you are blackmail.” Adrian looks up from his paperwork again. Stiles licks his lips. It’s just slow enough that it could be meant as a tease and just fast enough that it could be Stiles’ ridiculous oral fixation at work. He immediately regrets looking up. “If you don’t have anything better to do than interrupt my work-“

 

“I believe I suggested several better things to do, but you shot them all down.” Stiles _sounds_ like he’s leering.

 

“Fine. Fine.” Adrian pushes back from the table. He tries to school his voice into impatience- rather, impatience with the interruptions, not impatience with how long it’s taking Stiles to get over to his side of the table and do something. “You have thirty _five_ minutes before I kick you out. What do you want?”

 

“Yessss,” Stiles hisses, and does some flailing fist-pumping gesture of success that, as per usual, charms and irritates him in equal parts. He’s straddling Adrian in his kitchen chair before Adrian really registers that he’s gotten up. “Are you sure you don’t want to blow me?”

 

“Yes, Stiles,” Adrian lies. He lies and he puts his hands on the small of Stiles’ back, sliding down to the solid thighs that are pinning him in place. Stiles’ fingers are plucking at his shirt, flitting over his shoulders and smoothing out a wrinkle here, lingering there.

 

“And you’re not gonna budge on fucking me?”

 

Adrian squeezes Stiles’ thighs, not ungently, and then tugs Stiles’ chin down from its stubborn angle to kiss him. He means to make it short, but Stiles chases after him when he pulls back and it’s lingering, and sweet. “Not tonight.”

 

“C’monnnn,” Stiles whines against his mouth. Adrian kisses him again.

 

“No. If you come again, yes, then. When there’s enough time to treat you properly.” He rubs small circles on the insides of Stiles’ thighs with his thumbs as Stiles’ arms drape heavy across his shoulders. “I want… in spite of the _astoundingly_ immoral and illegal nature of my- my feelings for you- I want this to be good for you. I don’t want to use you.”

 

Stiles’ breath is hot against his cheek and his face is too close for Adrian to read the expression on his face clearly, but he seems to be considering this. Finally he speaks, and it’s the joking, lying Stiles that shows up in his classroom rather than the playful unguarded one of the weekend. He may not be able to see the awkward twist of Stiles’ fake smile, but he can hear it.

 

“Y’know, I’m sort of thinking you’re not very good at being a pedophile. I’m not feeling very _groomed_ here, you keep trying to talk me out of sleeping with you… it hurts a boy’s feelings, man.”

 

Adrian pulls his glasses off and tosses them on the table so he can press his face into Stiles’ neck. “I’m sorry that you’re not feeling particularly abused, but I’m not in the habit of sleeping with underage boys. I don’t know what pedophile best practices are right now.”

 

“You didn’t even offer me candy or a puppy out of your van or anything,” Stiles goes on. There are fingers in his hair, slowly dragging against the grain on his scalp. It almost seems affectionate. Adrian doesn’t know which to believe, Stiles’ lies or Stiles’ touch.

 

“Do you know what kind of gas mileage pedo vans get? Shitty, shitty gas mileage. I’ll stick with the hybrid, thanks.”

 

Stiles’ laughter, at least, seems genuine. “Okay, so if you’re not going to fuck me or blow me or let me borrow your book or give me roofied candy, can we at least, like, make out? I mean, I get another half an hour so we should at least make out.”

 

Adrian squeezes Stiles’ legs again. “Yeah, fine. But I’m old and this chair isn’t built for two people, so sofa. Go.”

 

He is ignored. One press of Stiles’ dry lips to his turns into another, until Adrian pulls away. He’s reluctant. Stiles’ mouth is right there and tempting him back. “Stiles, my legs are falling asleep.”

 

“Fine, _fine_ ,” Stiles grumbles. He lurches off Adrian’s lap and knees him in the stomach. “Sorry, man.”

“It’s okay, just, go. Go.” Adrian doesn’t resist the urge to swat the back of his thighs, not quite high enough to be rightfully called a spank but certainly bordering on that edge.

 

“Pervert!” Stiles complains over his shoulder, but he’s moving in the direction of the living room and that gives Adrian time to finish stacking his papers and setting his phone on its charger, alarms set. Then, only then, does he amble after Stiles.

 

Who has gotten comfortable by taking off his top two shirts and his shoes, and- Christ, he’s undone the button on his ridiculous jeans. Stiles makes a grabbing motion with his hands that Adrian thinks he’s supposed to interpret as an invitation. He’s right, apparently, because as soon as he’s within reach Stiles takes a handful of the front of his shirt and drags him down onto the couch.  He collapses into an ungainly tangle of gangly limbs and ends up with Stiles’ knees around his waist. Before he can make any more protests there are clever fingers on his face and lips against his.

 

It is beyond easy to lose track of the time when Stiles is right there, wrapped around him like a particularly amorous limpet. An amorous, _pushy_ limpet; he has to keep pushing his own shirt back down, or swatting Stiles’ hand away from zippers. When strong fingers pinch the meat of his waist, and twist to make his skin burn and the flesh ache briefly, he flinches and breaks away from Stiles.  
  
That actually _hurt_. “What the hell, Stiles?”  
  
“Stop being a _baby_ ,” Stiles answers, but he sounds almost contrite, and the same fingers that pulled too hard at his skin are now soothing over it. “Sorry.”

 

 Adrian tilts Stiles’ chin to the right and kisses his ear, down to the shivering skin over his pulse, past the line where the curve of his throat meets the collar of his shirt. “Apology accepted.”

 

By the time the alarm on his phone goes off, the sting is mostly gone from his skin.

 

“Seriously, you set an alarm to kick me out? I was gonna blow you,” Stiles complains, practically melting into the sofa in a grand show of unwillingness to leave even as Adrian drags himself away.

 

“Three minutes to get your shit together and get out of my apartment,” Adrian says, and tries to sound less reluctant about than he actually is. It’s not like he’s had fantasies about Stiles’ mouth on his dick for over a year now or anything.

 

“I hate you.” Stiles pinches him again, in the arm this time, and it doesn’t hurt; it’s playful, like Stiles’ tone, not goading or punishing. “You are a terrible horrible person, and I’m going to crash driving home because you’re making me leave with a boner.”

 

The likelihood of Stiles never having driven in a state of sexual frustration before is probably pretty low, Adrian thinks. He’ll be fine. By token of conciliation, though, he holds out the _Antidotarium_.

 

“Thanks. So, can I come tomorrow, aaaand…” Stiles doesn’t look at him, but the gesture he makes with his left hand is evocative enough.  
  
“Friday, after nine? There’s a school board meeting tomorrow.”

 

“Nine thirty, then.” Stiles stands, having accomplished the Herculean task of shoving all his notebooks and binders back into his backpack without breaking any of the glass objects responsible for the now-familiar clinking. “I’ll bring the jailbait, you bring the moral reprehensibility and we’ll both bring our failure to get laid within our individual age groups.”

 

“You bring that book back or I’ll kick you out without feeding you on Friday,” Adrian says, tugging Stiles’ shirt down absently while he’s still within reach. At least he doesn’t look too debauched.

 

“Deal,” Stiles says, and leans down to kiss him on the forehead like _he’s_ the child in this non-relationship.

  

* * *

 

 

“I have to be home by one and you said you’d feed me, so let’s _go_ ,” Stiles commands, holding out Adrian’s book as soon as the door shuts behind him. “I’m not missing out on afterglow _or_ food come on come on come _on_.”

  
“Pushy pushy,” Adrian says, hooking his fingers through the belt loops of Stiles’ jeans and pulling him forward. He’d cancelled dinner with his parents at the last minute, so he’s been waiting, and stewing, and wondering what tricks and torments Stiles has up his sleeves this time.

 

“You liiiiiike it,” Stiles sing-songs, and stands on his toes. “You liiiike how pushy I am, admit it.”  
  
“I like it when you’re not a smug asshole,” Adrian complains, but he takes advantage of the proximity of Stiles’ mouth to his and kisses him. “Bedroom’s this way, since you’re in such a rush.”

 

Stiles doesn’t take his shirt off this time, either, but Adrian finds it hard to care when Stiles is drooling utter filth into Adrian’s pillow with every push forward.

 

* * *

 

 

Rules get laid down eventually, over days and weeks and weekends and overnights.

 

-Adrian will never, _ever_ use Stiles’ schoolwork to get what he wants out of Stiles, and Stiles can’t use this to effect his schoolwork (not that he needs it, Stiles’ grades have never been better)

 

-Stiles will not talk about his ex, or why he doesn’t take off his shirt in front of Adrian.

 

-Adrian does not ask what Stiles needs chemicals for, or lab equipment, or any of the other bizarre requests he makes, so long as it doesn’t add up to bombs or drugs (the one time he is concerned, it’s fertilizer, but a week later Stiles asks for a bunch of seed samples and he writes it off as general weirdness and scientific interest).

 

-Stiles doesn’t like rimming. At all. Adrian isn’t happy about how unhappy it makes Stiles the one time he tries (before he knows, before he’s shoved away) because it doesn’t sit right, but he’s fairly certain it’s related to the ex-boyfriend they  don’t talk about but whose calls Stiles always takes.

 

-Stiles has the final and most important word in everything, especially sex. Adrian does nothing to him without being asked to, explicitly.

 

-Stiles has to tell him in advance when he’s coming over, mostly so he doesn’t have to explain to his neighbor why the sheriff’s son has been lurking in the hallway again.

 

-And they don’t fuck until Stiles’ homework is done.

 

They don’t fuck that often, really, considering all the time Stiles spends at Adrian’s apartment. Apparently Stiles really had meant it when he’d said he needed a quiet place to do homework, because half the time he’s over all he does is sit at the kitchen table or in the living room and cram for tests or write papers. Even then, there are times he won’t come for stretches of a week or more.

 

“Berkeley isn’t going to get into itself,” Stiles mutters at him once, when he interrupts a particularly intense study session to see if Stiles wants something to eat.

 

There are nights when Stiles is too tired from… from _something_ , that isn’t lacrosse or homework or school… and those are the nights that let Adrian trick himself into thinking that this is something real and legitimate. It’s the moments after they’ve stopped bickering about what to watch- Stiles voting for _Storage Wars_ , Adrian for classic _Buffy,_ and compromising on _Mythbusters_ \- when Stiles leans back against his chest and relaxes with a heaving sigh, that Adrian gets to forget that this isn’t dangerous. It’s just Stiles and him and human contact.

 

If after an episode and a half Stiles gets restless and fidgets until they relocate to the bedroom, Adrian doesn’t complain; he doesn’t complain if all that happens is they watch TV together until Stiles goes home. 

 

The comforting normalcy of just _being_ with Stiles shatters his heart in his chest every time he’s reminded of how false it is.

 

He can never _just be with Stiles_.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s January. It’s a cold winter for Beacon Hills, the product of a La Niña year, and the school has only remembered that they actually _do_ have a heating system now that they’ve been back from break for a week and a half.

 

“Can you get snakeskins? Like, whole ones? They don’t have to be very big but with the head still attached.” Stiles leans across his desk and makes a grab for Adrian’s briefcase, presumably to get at the battered supply catalog he keeps in there. Adrian grabs it before Stiles can get his grubby little mitts on it and holds it out of reach. “Or lizard skins.”  
  
“I don’t even want to know why you want lizard skins,” Adrian says. He finishes wiping the chalkboards clean in preparation for tomorrow’s lecture.

 

“Because _reasons_ ,” Stiles answers, hopping up on the desk and grabbing for Adrian’s tablet. It’s late in the afternoon, well after anyone but the janitors have gone home; even the recidivist detentioners (of whom Stiles was, admittedly, one) are gone. Stiles is only around because he’d mouthed off to Mr. Ma during calculus and stopped in to pester him after his own detention. “Can you get them?”  
  
“I may have to call around but I’ll see what I can do.”

 

“As usual, you are the best.” Stiles ostentatiously checks to see if the door is shut, like he doesn’t remember slamming it shut behind him twenty minutes ago, and then grabs a handful of Adrian’s shirt to pull him in for a kiss.

  
“ _Not. Here_.” Adrian hisses, before Stiles can kiss him again. He doesn’t take his hands off Stiles’ waist, though, because he is as always weak.

 

“You’re no fun.”  
  
“And you’re still seventeen and a student.”  
  
“My birthday’s in a month and a half,” Stiles points out helpfully. “And I graduate in five months.”  
  
Adrian doesn’t normally let himself think about how soon Stiles’ graduation is. He knows, intellectually, that Stiles has applied to college, that he will likely be leaving the state, but he tries to forget how short the time he has left actually is. Stiles’ eighteenth birthday, on the other hand, is something he looks forward to. He may or may not have plans. Until then, though…

 

“We can’t do anything _here_ , it’s too risky for both of us.” Adrian squeezes Stiles’ side gently, reluctantly. “Are you coming over tonight?”  
  
“Yeah, I have to cook dinner for my dad and then I’ll be there.” Stiles, disobedient little wretch that he is, pulls him in for another too-short and far-too-intense kiss. “You can read over my application for Columbia, I want to get it in tonight.”

 

“Sounds good. Now get out of here before someone comes in.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah.” Stiles hops off his desk and gathers up his things; the familiar rattle of glass bottles, that Adrian now knows to hold plant samples and ashes and bits of rock, follows him out the door and down the hall. He’ll probably never know why Stiles carries around a supply of monkshood, mistletoe, and a bezoar, but since he’d laughed off the suggestion that he was some kind of hippy neo-pagan or whatever, Adrian had stopped asking. 

 

* * *

 

 

Stiles’ grip on the headboard has to be painful, but at least the damn thing’s stable enough that it’s not knocking into the wall with every jerk of Stiles’ hips. Stiles rides him hard, as hard as he can given how tightly they’re plastered together, one hand clutching too-hard at Adrian’s hair and the other on the headboard for leverage. Adrian clings to Stiles’ thigh and the broad expanse of his back under his shirt.

 

Stiles’ shirt sticks to Adrian’s skin.

 

“God. _Fucking_. Dammit.” Stiles grunts against Adrian’s cheek when he loses the rhythm he’s built up. Adrian laughs, helpless and breathless, and Stiles laughs with him.

 

When Stiles comes, it’s with Adrian’s hand around his cock and Adrian’s name in his breathy whine, and Adrian follows him into the orgasmic haze with only a few quick jabs of his hips.

 

The sheets are a fucked over mess from wrestling around earlier. Adrian disposes of the condom while Stiles hunts for their underwear in the tangle; his own boxers hit him in the face as he puts the lube back in the drawer and reaches for tissues.

 

“Thanks _so much_ ,” Adrian drawls, grabbing Stiles around the waist and tumbling him down onto the mattress.

 

“You’re so welcome,” Stiles retorts. There are moments of companionable silence while mutual cleaning occurs, then Stiles rests his head in the curve of Adrian’s shoulder and sighs like the weight of the world is finally off his shoulders. “So I really do graduate in like, five months, don’t I?”  
  
“Yeah.” Adrian kisses the top of Stiles’ head, where his hair is sweaty and disheveled.

 

“What are you going to do if I get into Columbia or something?”  
  
“I don’t know. I’ve never had to worry about this before.” He lets his fingers curl under the hem of Stiles’ t-shirt.

 

“I’d miss you, you know?”

 

“I love you.” He doesn’t mean to say it, but it’s true. It’s been floating in the back of his throat for months, itching to come out. Stiles jerks in his arms, like it’s a shock in a movie, then settles back. He’s not even tense in Adrian’s arms. Adrian kisses him, squeezes him again, but he’s prepared to let go if Stiles pulls away. He knows he is the needy one, the clingy one, the overly invested one here.

 

“I. I know.” Stiles says, quietly, and doesn’t pull away.

 

Adrian sighs his own weight of the world sigh, then pauses. “Did you just _Han Solo_ me?”

 

Stiles lets out a laugh that’s so bright it hurts, like looking into the sun at noon in August. “Yeah, apparently.”

 

“I take it back, I hate you,” Adrian says, and when Stiles pinches his leg he feels a sting in his eyes that might nearly be tears of relief.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "And if you hurt him, in any way, I will personally make sure no one ever finds the pieces of your corpse.” The smile she gives him could freeze helium.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be one more chapter after this; the word count kind of got away from me and rather than wait even longer for one 12,000 word chapter, I figured the precursor to misery could go up sooner rather than later.

In class the next day, Stiles smiles at him from behind his Bunsen burner and Adrian has to contain his own grin in return.

 

* * *

 

 

“Mr. Harris, do you have a second?” Lydia Martin always asks for a moment of his time like she’s a queen requesting assistance from a servant.

 

“Only a second, Ms. Martin, I have meetings to get to,” Adrian lies. He has no meetings after school today, only class prep and dinner. He packs his travel mug into his bag and looks at her over the rims of his glasses.

 

“I just wanted to let you know that I _know_ ,” Lydia says sweetly, and with a clear threat.

 

“Know what?” he asks, folding his hands as calmly as possible on the desk top to disguise their sudden unsteadiness.

 

“About you and Stiles, of course.” She wears innocence coyly and it doesn’t suit her, he thinks bitterly.

 

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re referring to.”  
  
“Stop dicking around, Mr. Harris. You’re fucking Stiles. And if you hurt him, in _any_ way, I will personally make sure no one ever finds the pieces of your corpse.” The smile she gives him could freeze helium.

 

“Did he tell you I hurt him?” He’ll put himself out of Stiles’ misery before Lydia Martin has the chance to do anything to him.

 

“He didn’t tell me _anything_ , don’t worry. Your little secret’s safe with him. And me. And a few other relevant parties. We won’t tell anyone, but you need to know… we’ll take steps.” Lydia wiggles her fingers in his direction. “I just wanted you to know that.”  
  
“How long have you known, then?” Adrian stares at his fingers to avoid her eyes.

 

Lydia scoffs. “Forever. And _trust me_ , there are a few people who’d be very interested to know all the sordid little details, not to mention, I don’t know, the Sheriff, but as long as you make him happy we’ll look out for you, too.”

 

“I don’t think I want you looking out for me, Lydia, if you’re the one threatening to feed me to the pigs.”

 

“What do you think I am, some gross old man in a Guy Ritchie movie? Pigs _. Please._ Who uses _pigs_ these days?” She scoffs again. “Somehow, in some bizarre way, against all logic and common sense, you’re actually _good_ for Stiles, so keep your head down and take care of him and when we graduate and leave town, we’ll forget this conversation ever happened.”

 

Adrian swallows thickly. “And if he graduates and doesn’t want to leave town?”  
  
Lydia’s nails click against the wood of his desk when she leans in. Her perfume chokes him. “Will you try to stop him from leaving?”  
  
“God no, I want him to get out of this shithole and make something of himself.”

 

“Then we won’t have a problem, will we?” She retreats and makes for the door. “Just watch your back and look after him. Oh, and, he wants the _Antidotarium_ again.”

  

* * *

 

 

“All of my applications are in, officially, forever, and I am never going to think about college again _ever_ ,” Stiles declares from the kitchen table.

 

“Sorry to burst your bubble, but in a few months you’ll have to make an actual decision on where to go, and then if you go to grad school the whole process is even worse,” Adrian informs him. He scowls at the stove top. Why the fuck isn’t the risotto risottoing?

 

“Don’t mention grad school. I have three years before I have to think about that and I am going to be blissfully ignorant about the whole situation until the last possible second and then you can cheerlead me through that too.” Stiles throws something at the back of his head. “When’s dinner ready?”

 

“Who says I’m feeding you? This is for me.” Adrian turns around and flicks a grain of rice in Stiles’ direction. “Go away.”

 

“But I’m huuuuungry,” Stiles whines. He lurches to his feet and plasters himself against Adrian’s chest.

  
Adrian startles when he goes to kiss the top of Stiles’ head, out of habit, and realizes he’s got his temple instead. “When did you _grow_?”

 

Stiles shrugs and chews on his shoulder melodramatically. “I dunno, like, constantly since conception? I mean I started out as like a sperm and an egg and I’ve kind of gotten a lot bigger since then. I’m hungry. Foooood.”

“Stiles, you’re _tall_.”

 

“Are you going to stop liking me because I don’t fit in your pocket anymore?”

  
The hesitancy in Stiles’ voice strikes him deep in the marrow of his bones. Adrian slides his arms around Stiles’ waist and ignores the risotto that quietly bubbles on the stove behind them. He kisses the same spot again, then nudges Stiles until he turns his face up for Adrian to kiss him fully.

  
“Sorry, kiddo, you’re stuck with me until you break it off,” Adrian says. Stiles grins at him, then sniffs suspiciously.

 

“Risotto’s burning, dude.”

 

“Don’t call me- _fuck!_ ”

  

* * *

 

 

2:13 in the morning is _not_ the time Adrian wants to be woken out of a sound, guiltless, dreamless sleep by the sound of his doorbell. He ponders not answering it until it rings again, and again, and then sounds continually like someone’s leaning on it. It’s compounded by whoever it is pounding on the door.

 

“Ffffuck, I’m _coming,_ ” he yells, struggling into a sweatshirt and making sure he’s actually wearing some kind of pants. He shoves his glasses onto his face and blinks the confusion of sleep away. The doorbell rings one more time before he makes it from the bedroom to the living room to look through the peep hole. Stiles stares back at him through the distortion. He’s covered in _something_ that looks distressingly like blood. Adrian pulls the door open so quickly he gouges his big toe and swears violently, but he’s more concerned about pulling Stiles into the privacy and safety of the apartment.

 

“Hi,” Stiles says wanly, slouching back against the door. Adrian gawps at him like an idiot.

 

“Why are you he- you’re _covered_ in blood, what are you _doing_ here?” Adrian demands, checking Stiles’ face for injuries, then further down. “Are you hurt, bleeding?”

 

“I’m fine, I mean I was bleeding, it’s stopped, I’ve got stitches. I’m okay. Stop. Fussing.”

 

Adrian grabs Stiles by the shoulders and holds him in place against the door. “Where are you hurt? Do you need to go to the hospital?”  
  
Stiles smacks his hands off and awkwardly rolls up his right sleeve, revealing a bandage that’s bloodstained, but less so than the rest of him.  “I’m okay, I promise. Mrs. McCall stitched me up. Please, just, can I use the shower?”

 

“Stiles, there’s more blood on you than you could’ve lost and still come here without passing out. What the fuck is going on?” Adrian rubs nervously at a dried smear on Stiles’ cheek. “Does your father know you’re hurt?”  
  
“Yeah, he knows, it’s not the first time.” Stiles leans into Adrian’s hand and doesn’t meet his eyes. “He thinks I’ve gone home, he’ll be out all night dealing with-“

 

“With _what_ , Stiles? Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?”

 

“I _can’t_ ,” Stiles snaps. “Please let me take a shower, Adrian.”  
  
It’s the use of his name, and the quiet edge of stress that Stiles’ voice takes on, that makes Adrian pull Stiles in carefully for a short hug, to futilely try to comfort him. Stiles rarely calls  him by name, even now.

 

“Yeah. I’ll make coffee. Go get cleaned up.” He lets go, though Stiles lingers in his personal space for another moment. “Take as long as you need.”

Stiles is halfway down the hall before he turns to give Adrian the smallest smile he thinks he’s ever seen, so slight as to barely deserve the designation. “Thanks. I… thanks.”

“Go,” Adrian orders, and heads to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. If he’s going to be awake at 2 am dealing with whatever utter fucking insanity Stiles is entangled in, he needs coffee. When the pot’s finished brewing he finds the two biggest mugs he has and decamps with them, and his laptop, to the bedroom to wait for Stiles. 

By the time the water stops running in the bathroom, Adrian has managed to discover precisely nothing about any sort of violence or police action in Beacon Hills that would leave Stiles covered in so much blood. He sets his laptop aside and considers that the blood will have made Stiles’ clothes unwearable, so he busies himself by finding something for Stiles to wear while he waits.

 

“Sorry to wake you up and shit, I just didn’t want to be alone,” Stiles says from the doorway. Adrian looks up from rifling through his drawers for a shirt. “I, um, I threw my clothes in the trash, but maybe I should just burn them? They’re kinda beyond redemption.”  
  
“We can figure that out later. C’mere.” Adrian holds out his hand and Stiles trudges into his arms. Adrian ignores the fact that Stiles’ bare skin is still wet for the moment. He ignores the fact that Stiles is shirtless, in his presence, for the first time. It’s not important compared to the way he’s shivering, even though the room feels stiflingly warm.

 

“D’you want coffee?” Adrian asks, after a minute. “Or pants?”

 

“Yeah. Um. Pants’d be good. So you probably want to know, with the blood and shit.” Stiles hitches up the towel around his waist and pulls back to scrub at his face with the back of his hand, almost nonchalantly.

 

Adrian fumbles through another drawer and finds a pair of sleep pants for Stiles; he averts his eyes while Stiles pulls them on. It feels wrong to take advantage of the situation and ogle, when Stiles has never shown any inclination to be fully naked in front of him before. Voyeuristic. He retreats to perch on the edge of the bed. He feels out of place in his own bedroom, at this strange hour of the night, with Stiles as hesitant and evasive as the first time he stayed the night.

 

Stiles pulls the towel over his head like a shawl, wrapping it so tightly around his shoulders that the edges obscure part of his face. “So. Blood. And shit. And stitches.”

 

He lingers in the middle of the room, bundled inside Adrian’s ugly flannel pants and slightly ratty bath towel, until he shrugs. “Can I stay here tonight?”

 

“Of course,” Adrian says, and shrugs in answer. “You know you can. What happened out there? Where is your father?”

 

Stiles deflates under his towel and shuffles over to the bed. He falls to the mattress with a thud that probably wakes the woman who lives below him, and leans hard on Adrian’s shoulder. “Would you believe me if I said it was vampires?”

 

“Stiles.” Adrian slides an arm around his shoulders slowly and lets himself rest his cheek on Stiles’ head. “If you’re in trouble…”

 

“No, it’s not… _trouble_ …  remember all those wild animal attacks last year? And the whole serial killer thing?”

 

“It’s hard to forget since I got _arrested_ for that.”

 

“It’s kind of like that, but without a high school serial killer and/or mountain lions.”  

 

“That… doesn’t make _any_ sense.”

 

“Welcome to my life, man.” Stiles’ laughter isn’t happy at all. “I was with Scott and, and _people_ , out at the park at Elm and Thorpe, and a bunch of teenagers on PCP assaulted us.”  
  
“Teenagers.”

 

“On PCP, right.”

 

Stiles can’t see the face he makes at that, just because of their current awkward cuddling position, which is probably a good thing. They’ve been over the fact that Adrian does actually understand the Buffy references with which Stiles chooses to liberally sprinkle his every day speech.  

 

“So like, we were at the park, and these big fucking guys with like, a bigass dog, they just went crazy at us. And Boyd, he’s pretty scary, right? And Jackson’s no slouch, and Alison was like, a baby Olympiad or something with archery, did you know that? So she’s a badass. But I mean, it got kinda messy before the cops showed up.”

 

“Why did they attack you- right. PCP.” Adrian slides his hand down to Stiles waist and pulls him closer. “So where did all the blood come from?”  
  
“Huh? Oh. Um. I maybe had to uh, ugh. I had to kill the dog, okay, it tried to maul me.” Stiles sniffs, hard, and turns his face into Adrian’s neck. The towel slips so his wet hair sticks to Adrian’s face. “It was kind of messy.”

 

“What did- it’s not important, never mind.” Adrian inhales the wet scent of Stiles’ skin and his own shampoo. “So the cops came? And Mrs. McCall stitched you up- why aren’t you at the hospital?”

 

“So the cavalry showed up, and it was a fucking _mess_ , but like, we’re just kids, and these dudes ran off as soon as they saw flashing lights. And it’s not like Dad doesn’t know where to find me for a statement or anything.” Stiles shrugs and his shoulder digs into Adrian’s ribcage painfully. “It was hella traumatizing and Mrs. McCall isn’t exactly the gentlest of nurses after she’s already stitched you up in her kitchen six times in the past six months, and I kind of just want to not talk about it, okay?”

 

The way in which Stiles curls into him and his voice gets harsh and small makes Adrian hesitant where he should be sure. He is the last person Stiles should have come to tonight, but the amount of blood he’d been covered in suggests he was the first one to open the door for him. 

 

“Do you want to try to sleep?” he suggests. He tries to think of what he could do to comfort Stiles when it sounds like the trauma of whatever actually happened- which has to have been worse than the pile of bullshit he was just fed- is eating away at him, but he has no skill for comfort.

 

“I want to get shitfaced and forget about the world but you don’t have any liquor around and that’s one of the reasons I like you.” Stiles’ switch from utter lies to brutal honesty throws him for a loop in a way that it usually doesn’t. He hadn’t thought Stiles had known about that.

 

“Well I’ve got an unopened bottle of cough syrup somewhere around here but that might be too middle school for you.” Adrian takes refuge in their familiar sarcastic repertoire of pedophile jokes and is rewarded with a soggy hiccup of laughter. “I’m going to turn the coffee pot off, you lie down and try not to open your stitches or something.”

 

“Do you know how gory my death would be if I opened these stitches? Nurses are scarier than werewolves, man, they’ve got needles and you can’t kill them because then your best friend’ll be sad.”

 

Adrian kisses the top of Stiles’ head again and steals the towel away from him- otherwise it’ll get tangled up in the sheets and stay damp and get mildewed and no one likes that- before retreating to the kitchen to fuss and collect his nerves. Between the slats of the kitchen blinds he can see someone’s headlights; a quick check reveals it’s some dick in a muscle car who’s probably going to regret leaving those on in the morning. It’s not cops though, and it’s not Stiles’ Jeep, so it’s not his problem.

 

By the time he closes the door to the bedroom behind him, Stiles has turned off the lights and cocooned himself in blankets. “I have decided that I don’t want to deal with life anymore and I’m going to just be a burrito forever.”  
  
“That doesn’t make any sense, Stiles.” Adrian steals enough of the sheets out from under Stiles to crawl under with him, and spoons behind him.

  
“That’s because you’re too old to understand the genius of my five-point burrito life plan.”

 

“Did you get into the cough syrup?”

 

“I think you’ll find that I am not the writers on Syfy and do not need cough syrup to come up with truly ingenious ideas, okay, and I am insulted that you think so little of me.”

 

Adrian’s snort puts an end to the conversation for a few minutes, while Stiles inches back into him until even through his shirt Adrian can feel the heat of Stiles’ bare skin. He drapes his arm over Stiles waist, holds him close when he shivers. The fingers of the arm he’s pillowing his head with are nearly numb before Stiles speaks again.

 

“Adrian. Can we have sex, please? I. I need. Please?” He doesn’t shift against Adrian the way he normally does when he’s horny, or turn to kiss him til they’re both stupid and breathless and laughing. It’s as clinical a question as his requests for help with homework, but more distressing for that. Since the first fateful fellatio months and months ago, their sex has never been clinical. Routine, occasionally, familiar, but not cold and without a spark of desire. Stiles laughs about his own dick in bed, he doesn’t ask meekly and stay motionless.

 

“Are you sure?” Adrian pulls his arm free and shifts back so he can pull Stiles over, look him in the eye. It’s dark, but there’s reflected streetlights and a nearly full moon outside with light that filters through the blinds. Stiles blinks at him with an expression that’s nearly impossible to read, like a foreign language where the only words you know are _stupid_ and _train station._ He can read one of those words on Stiles’ face and it’s little enough to do with public transit. “You’ve had a fucked up night already. You should just sleep.”

 

“Why do you always have to try to be noble when that’s the last fucking thing I need from you?” Stiles asks.

 

“Because I worry about you. And I love you.”  
  
“Okay, so can you trust me? I mean, how long have we been doing this? Have I ever done anything I don’t want to do?” Stiles pulls the glasses of Adrian’s face and brushes the hair off his forehead. “I need you. I’m so _tired_ but I can’t sleep and I feel like I’m going to fall out of my skin and my brain won’t shut the fuck up, _please_.”

 

When Stiles kisses him, it’s like the first time in the car again, the wrong angle and hardly there but loaded with something that Stiles can’t tell him. Adrian touches the curve of Stiles’ cheek with his fingertips.

 

“Just _do_ something before I go _insane_.”

 

Adrian kisses him to silence him, because he’s not any good at comforting someone who’s hurt in ways he can’t slap a bandaid on, because kissing Stiles is always the right approach. Stiles grabs at his arms and pulls him in. Their legs are tangled in the sheets and with each other. There isn’t but a moment before Stiles tugs at his shirt, hissing demands for it to be _off_ between kisses. Settling against Stiles, skin to skin, in the dark insulating isolation of the sheets and the closed room, feels painfully intimate.

 

The pace of forward movement seems slow for how desperate Stiles seems, clingy and never letting Adrian pull away more than an inch, but not asking for more.

 

“Stiles. Do you want- can I-“ Adrian mumbles, lets his hand drag over the ridges of Stiles’ ribs to the curve of his waist. The faintly slick feeling of scar tissue under his fingertips almost makes him flinch away, but he holds steady. Stiles doesn’t need him pulling back from this.

 

“Whatever you want, just, make me stop _thinking_ ,” Stiles pleads, and tangles ten fingers in Adrian’s hair. Adrian doesn’t try to resist the downward pressure then, but pauses at the center of his chest instead. He may not get another chance to see- well, feel, he can’t see anything specific without his glasses in the dark- to _touch_ Stiles’ bare skin like this. He kisses the skin above Stiles’ breastbone, with its slightest dusting of hair, then finds his way blindly to the peaked flesh of his nipple. He only brushes it gently with his lips, isn’t sure if Stiles likes that, or if it does anything for him at all, but the barely-audible intake of breath and the suddenly-tight fists in his hair make him want to experiment a bit.

 

It never ceases to amaze him how much the body varies in sensitivity and pleasure; Stiles flinches away from more than the lightest scrape of his teeth or pressure of his tongue on his chest, but when Adrian gets it right he squirms and gasps like he could come just from that.

 

He can’t, though, apparently, because he pushes Adrian down again too soon. Adrian goes, following the pressure, until he’s kissed his way down the smooth skin of Stiles’ belly to his hips. The sheets are tangled around his shoulders. When he looks up at Stiles, all he can see are blurred planes of light and shadow and the shuddering movement of his breathing. He knows without having to see in perfect clarity that Stiles’ cheeks are flushed and his eyes are wide, get wider and then clench shut when he pulls the drawstring open on his pants and slides them down.

 

Stiles isn’t fully hard when Adrian gets the waistband down. He shifts under the covers, until Stiles’ knee is hooked over his shoulder. It almost throws him off balance, to have spent so long building up to this and then have Stiles’ normally over-eager cock seem barely interested in the proceedings.

 

“Sorry,” Stiles whispers. He sounds miles away.

 

“Don’t be,” Adrian says, and tries to throw the force of his convictions behind such small words. He wraps his hands around Stiles’ thighs. He slides his cheek against the skin of Stiles’ stomach. “Do you want me to blow you?”  
  
“I don’t _care_.” Stiles’s fingers tug none-too-gently on his hair. “I don’t care, I don’t _care_ please.”

 

“Will you let me rim you?”

 

The guilt, the lowness he feels at asking for something he wants so badly in Stiles’ moment of weakness is outweighed by the desperate giggle and pressure on his scalp. “ _Yes_ , go to fucking _town_ , whatever.”

 

He doesn’t, despite wanting to beyond badly, bury his face between the firm meat of Stiles’ ass and slaver away until his jaw aches. He has some restraint, after all. Stiles shivers when Adrian presses kisses up his cock, shudders in a whole-body tremble that ends in him pushing his hips against Adrian’s face. Adrian takes soft flesh in his mouth and slowly sucks him. It’s infrequent that he starts blowing Stiles before he’s hard and gagging for it, just because Stiles is so young and so eager. It would be easy, normally, for Adrian to lose himself in the way Stiles’ cock hardens against his tongue and the way his breathing grows uneven. This time, though, he has new territory to explore.

 

It’s not until Stiles lets go of his hair that he pulls back. The breathy, whining complaint is familiar ground at least. He bites at Stiles’ hip.

 

“Turn over.” He slides back, out from between Stiles’ thighs and pushes him up on his knees. It’ll be easier for him and better for Stiles like this.

 

“Get on with it, oh my _god,_ ” Stiles whines. He sounds like he’s got a mouthful of pillow already. Adrian kisses the dimple to the left of Stiles’ spine, then the right. He’s fairly sure that if he could see clearly, he’d be able to see how sharply Stiles’ bones jut from his skin; in the dark he can only explore the shapes with his mouth as he follows the line of his vertebrae down until he can go no further without holding Stiles’ cheeks apart. Holding him _open_.

 

Stiles smells like soap, and sweat, and _sex_ , when Adrian presses his face into the exposed hollow of Stiles’ ass. He tastes of all those, too, the flavor of freshly scrubbed _boy_ on his tongue when he tentatively drags the flat of it over Stiles’ hole. Where he’s put his fingers and his cock and Stiles’ fingers. The deep shudder and high whine Stiles lets out drive him on.

 

He wants Stiles to get off on being rimmed the way he’s already getting off on rimming him. Adrian teases him, for the first time tonight, only tracing the edge of his asshole for long, drawn out moments that feel like hours. Not until Stiles’ thighs are trembling does he explore further, forcing the tip of his tongue past familiarly tight muscles.

 

“Oh my _fucking_ \- _fuck_ ,” Stiles whines eloquently, pushing back against Adrian’s face. Adrian finds it nearly impossible to laugh with his tongue up Stiles’ ass, though he gives it a genuine attempt. Stiles laughs weakly, thinly, and pulls away from Adrian’s tongue up his ass to swat at him. “Oh my god, don’t _laugh_!”

 

“Sorry, sorry,” Adrian says, kissing the inside of Stiles’ thigh.

 

“You’re such a dick, just do it.” Stiles pushes back against him. Adrian is just glad that Stiles has cheered up enough to laugh, a little. He tongues Stiles’ hole again, pressing back in and deeper. Stiles whines and squirms. Adrian works him open with the flat of his tongue, listening to the greedy gulps of air Stiles sucks in. He’s hard in the confines of his ragged sleep pants but ignores that for the time being in favor of wrapping a hand around Stiles’ cock. The minutes drag on in the best way while he loses track of time, drooling like a dumb animal, eating Stiles out, jerking him off until he’s begging for just a little more, _please, more_.

 

The familiarity of Stiles’ orgasm is reassuring on this bizarre night. The muffled, wordless wail into his pillow is one he’s heard countless times before; he knows how quickly Stiles grows too sensitive to keep stroking him. Adrian jerks him through the shakes and shivers of his aftermath and wipes the mess on his palm onto his pants. He slithers up the mattress, bringing the sheets with him, and tugs Stiles into his arms. 

 

“You’re still. I can, if you want,” Stiles mutters after a few quiet moments. He’s curled back into Adrian’s chest, with his pants tugged back up over his hips. If he holds his breath, he can almost feel the thud of Stiles’ heartbeat through two sets of ribs, faster and stronger than his won.

 

He presses a kiss to the damp tangle of Stiles’ short hair. “It’ll pass. I’ll live,” he says. He would feel like the most disgusting excuse for a man for making Stiles perform when he’s emotionally compromised. Not that he doesn’t always feel, at some level, disgusting and deeply rotten, but there are, truly, levels. Giving Stiles what he asks for is one thing, asking for something he doesn’t need in return is another.

“Why do you have to be so _nice_ sometimes,” Stiles asks, tangling their fingers together.

 

He has no answer for this that isn’t painful, that doesn’t spill out how guilty he is of so many things, that being good to Stiles is the only thing he can do to try to mitigate how awful he is for being _with_ Stiles. Instead, he kisses Stiles’ hair again, and again. Eventually his dick gets the memo that it’s not needed for the rest of the night and his hard on subsides; he strokes the back of Stiles’ broad hand with his thumb absently as he slowly aims for sleep.

 

The bitten-back hiccup and tremor of Stiles’s shoulders jostles him out of his doze. The rattling wheeze of his breath sounds dangerously like the precursor to tears. “Stiles. Are you- what’s wrong?”

 

“ _Nothing_ , I’m not, just need a minute,” Stiles stammers, curling deeper into himself. Adrian pets the line of his arm helplessly, cautious always to stop his fingers well above the line of his bandage. “I’m so tired, all the time, and my arm hurts, and everything- it isn’t _fair_ , why do I have to do it all, every time, I’m not the one with… you can’t _understand_.”  
  
“If you tell me, Stiles, I can _help_ ,” Adrian insists. “What can I do?”

 

Stiles shakes with his tears, gasping little-boy crying that seems to well up from some deep place Adrian didn’t know existed. “I can’t tell you. I _can’t._ I would, I would tell everyone, but no one would believe me, you won’t believe me, and I just want to be away from this fucking _mess_ and this fucking _shithole_ and its fucking insanity. I _hate_ everything. It’s not fair, it isn’t _fair_ , you’re the only- you shouldn’t be the only _safe_ place I have.”

 

The words tumble out of him in a breathless tirade between gasping sobs, like he can’t draw enough air in to breathe and talk but can’t decide between the two. Adrian holds him tightly, trying to breathe with him to steady him. He doesn’t know what to do other than this, the breathing, he doesn’t know how to calm Stiles in his near hysteria. He doesn’t know what’s _wrong_ to try to fix him.

 

“Stiles, _what can I do to help you_?” Adrian asks, again, sliding his arm around Stiles’ chest and holding him close.

 

“Nothing. Nothing. I mean, rewrite, rewrite three years of my life? Keep me from making a lot of really fucking bad decisions? So, nothing.” Stiles hiccups again, and sniffles, and wipes at his face. 

“Soon you’ll be eighteen, and you’ll graduate, and you can get out of here, away from whatever it is. Away from me,” Adrian murmurs, helplessly.

 

“God, I know, I just have to survive the next three months, and get in somewhere,” Stiles laughs, and it sounds painful. Forced. He sniffs again, and the tears start back up.

 

“I’ll take you to the city for your birthday, if you want.” Adrian gropes for something to calm Stiles, to cheer him, to remind him that the world outside Beacon Hills has more for him. “We can go anywhere. Pick a place, anything you’d like. You’ll be old enough for pretty much anywhere. We can get a hotel, if you want.”

 

“You’re such a creep.” Stiles squeezes his fingers. “Offering to take your barely legal boytoy to the big gay city for an overnight in a love nest.”  
  
Adrian snorts and squeezes back. “If that’s what you want. Hell, I’ll rent a damn van.” Stiles laughs again. “And then when you get into one of the Ivies, and they give you a big fucking scholarship, you can pick something else, okay?”

 

The shaking of Stiles’ shoulders slowly settles, leaving him pressed tight and still against Adrian’s chest.

 

“You can take me to some gross tattoo parlor and get my name tattooed across your ass,” Stiles suggests, shifting a little to look at him.

 

“Okay, maybe anything you want within _limits_.” He would, if Stiles put him on his knees and told him to do it, but he’s not going to admit that now. He can’t add that kind of insane devotion to the list of whatever it is that’s weighing Stiles down. Stiles gives him a watery smile and presses a kiss to his chin. “Maybe your initials, if you get into Harvard.”

 

“Fingers crossed for Harvard, then,” Stiles says, and settles back in.

 

Adrian keeps up his steady stream of inanities, of insanity, of promises he knows Stiles knows he can’t keep, until Stiles’ breathing steadies out and he relaxes into sleep. Adrian stays awake, staring into the dark at the back of Stiles’ head, until his alarm goes off at 6:30.

  

* * *

 

 

Stiles sleeps through Adrian’s shower, where he’s careful to wash out the last traces of dog’s blood and whatever the rest of the filth that had been on Stiles was. The clothes Stiles was wearing are tucked into the bathroom trashcan, faintly smelly and clearly stiff from dried fluids. Adrian bags them and tosses them by the front door to deal with on his way to his car.

 

Stiles also sleeps through Adrian dressing and making coffee, through him taking the trash out early since he’s got a few minutes to spare- the douchey muscle car is still in the parking lot, the woman two doors over and a floor down must have a new boyfriend or something, he thinks, and ignores it- and through him coming back in to see if Stiles is still sleeping. Adrian doesn’t want to wake him, but he sits beside him on the bed and shakes him gently awake. He carefully ignores the scars that are dragged across the meat of Stiles’ back and the smaller networks of pale skin that indicate healed wounds. He wonders which ones correspond to which absences from class and his bed. And he wonders what caused them, if _teenagers on PCP_ were responsible for all of them or just the new bandage on his arm.

 

“I have to go to work, but if you want to stay here- if your dad knows you’re not going to school- you can stay as long as you need,” Adrian says when Stiles glares at him.

 

“Can I eat all your food?” Stiles asks groggily.

 

“If I say no, you’re going to do it anyway, aren’t you?” Adrian rolls his eyes and leans in to kiss Stiles on the forehead. “Go back to sleep. If you do come to school, skip my class and I’ll let you make up the quiz next week. This is your _one_ sleeping-with-the-teacher get out of jail free card, got it?”

 

“Yes _sir_ ,” Stiles says, and pulls the sheets back up over his head.

 

Unsurprisingly, the whole motley crew is out of school today, with variations on _police incident, staying home on nurse/sheriff/paramedic’s recommendation_.

 

Fucking teenagers on PCP his ass.


End file.
